Have you ever been lost in the wilderness?

[Monte Masterson]

When I moved to Arizona in 2006, I was pretty much a pilgrim. Sure, I’d done some backpacking in the East, but nothing very serious really.

The main reason I moved to the West was to hike the mountains, so I was ready to jump right in. I went to an Army Surplus store in Mesa and bought a 20 liter pack and an emergency blanket, the heavier type that weighs about 14 oz. Then I stopped by REI and picked up a map of the Mazatzal  Wilderness, a quarter of a million acre area about an hour North of Phoenix.

I headed out early one morning and got to the Barnhardt trailhead at around daybreak. I packed 4 liters of water, extra sweatpants and sweatshirt, emergency blanket and some food. I had a 15 mile loop charted out that I planned on doing as a day hike.

I didn’t know that fires had ravaged much of the area a few years earlier, so many of the trail signs were gone. It was also slow going because of having to navigate down trees and such. It finally dawned on me that if I didn’t hurry up I wouldn’t finish the hike before dark. Little did I know I’d ended up moving along a wildcat trail for over an hour. Then came the profound realization that I was LOST! If it’s never happened to you it’s a feeling hard to describe.

Now I know what survival books mean when they say panic can get you killed faster than anything. Of course I was in an area where available water was scarce, so the fear was all the greater. I finally looked around and saw a main trail about 2 miles away on a high ridge. I scrambled up and down ravines like a madman for about 4 hours to reach the trail. It’s a wonder I didn’t really hurt myself and die out there in the fearful adrenalin rage.

Finally I got to the trail, all scratched and exhausted. Dusk was setting in and I couldn’t figure out on the map where I was. I found the softest spot I could and put on the extra sweatpants and sweatshirt. Then I wrapped myself up in the emergency blanket to survive the night. Temps got down in the 30’s with a heavy breeze. I was too cold to get any sleep, but the emergency blanket saved my life.

I was down to the last bit of water and a couple of protein bars. It was a long night and when dawn broke I quickly got on the move. About an hour later I reached the Barnhardt trail Junction and figured out where I was. It was about a 7 mile (mostly descending) hike back to my truck.

I learned a lot from that experience, the main lesson being that panic can be your demise quicker than anything else. Of course my navigating skills have improved quite a bit too.

Anyone else out there have any stories about being lost in the wilderness?

 

[Lester Moore]

Sobering story Monte. We got lost on a small, flat, heavily forested island once along the coast of BC during a kayak trip. We were hiking around the interior of the island and got turned around in deep forest not knowing which way was what, or how to get back to camp. The sun came out a bit and we followed the direction of the sun back to the shore we camped on.

Never been totally lost backpacking, but we got ourselves misplaced for a few hours on one trip…

We were hiking along the CDT in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains intent on taking a side trail to the East Window and the Mount Oso area. We came to an obvious, well-used trail junction heading in the correct direction, just about where we thought it should be based on how long we had been hiking. So we started hiking up the side valley, and the higher we got, the less well defined the trial became. After hiking over an hour we broke treeline and looked at the alpine valley we were in. It did not quite match the topography shown on our topo map. But it did perfectly match the topography of the neighboring valley to the north. Luckily we were able to easily hike up and over a ridge and get into the correct valley with less than an hour’s easy off-trail travel.

[David Thomas]

My most common experience isn’t so much getting lost as temporarily misplaced.  I’ll be caught up in a conversation or my own thoughts enough to blow past a trail junction. 1/2, 1 or 2 hours later, when things aren’t adding up, I’ll scratch my head, replay what I should have done in my mind, and end up hiking back a few miles.  Those “wasted” return miles are always the hardest, emotionally.

Now there’s a technological solution: If there’s an important trail junction coming up in an hour, I can set my phone to alarm in 50 minutes.

[Matthew / BPL]

I have been lucky and not been lost for more that twenty minutes. It happened in forest on the Mogollon Rim with no sightlines to any landmarks. I’ve tried to become more aware of the sun in the forest as a general reference since then.

We were thinking of trying out the Barnhardt Trail tomorrow. I’ll be sure to print a map from Caltopo.

[Monte Masterson]

The Barnhardt trail is well marked and easy to follow. It’s probably one of the top 5 classic hikes (outside GCNP) in Arizona. The geology is mind blowing.

I got lost somewhere off the Mazatzal Divide trail.

[Roger Caffin]

Being lost is a state of mind, not a location thing.
I know where we are – we are HERE.

Relating HERE with the map has occasionally taken a little while of course.

Cheers

[Rex Sanders]

In 1980 the PCT in Southern California was not well marked, or even, in some places, an actual trail. So on many occasions, after too much head scratching, compass-bearing-taking, backtracking, etc., my hiking partner and I would rely on “when in doubt, head north.” It usually turned out OK.

Maybe there are different kinds of lost?

Type 1 – Inconveniently lost
You think you are “here”, then suddenly realize you aren’t. But relatively quickly you figure out how to get to a known place, then all is well. Usually triggered by missing a trail junction. Easy to stay calm and work out the problem.

This happens to me a few times per year.

Type 2 – Lost but not threatened
Being more lost than that, but having the knowledge, skills, gear, and supplies to know you’ll figure it out or hunker down before anything too bad happens. Situation often improves dramatically after some combination of resting, drinking, or eating. It’s stressful, maybe your trip is in jeopardy, you can feel the unease rising, but you know you’ll be OK, so panic (usually) isn’t an issue. Panic might come up for your less skilled or less confident hiking partners, so dealing with that adds stress.

Hasn’t happened to me in quite a few years, because I’ve gotten much better at staying found. My PCT example above is Type 2 lost. Probably what Daniel Boone experienced if this quote is real: “I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.”

Type 3 – Lost and threatened
Really truly lost, with conditions deteriorating that you aren’t completely prepared for. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know how to get found again, maybe you don’t even have a map. Often involves the sun setting or the weather getting worse, so hypothermia can play a big factor, both for survival and scrambling your thinking. Sometimes involves running out of water in hot weather with no obvious sources. Panic control becomes essential to survival.

I can’t recall a time I’ve been this lost.

Interesting topic, thanks for bringing it up.

— Rex

[John Vance]

My experience is more like Davids, just displaced occasionally.  My philosophy is that I planned on going out for a certain number of days and it doesn’t really matter my route.  As long as I make my way home at the predetermine time, I wasn’t lost, just a change in plans.   Recreational backpacking I haven’t ever been lost.

On the CDT in ’84 when much of the trail didn’t really exist, I was technically lost for days at a time.  So long as I stayed close to the divide, and was moving closer to the border, life was good.  Being a southbounder made this even more fuzzy but a great adventure which was what I was after.

[jscott]

I once wandered down to a lake at night to fill up one last liter of water before bed, and then couldn’t find my tent for almost an hour. Of course I didn’t bring my headlamp because I was enjoying the stars and anyway, the lake wasn’t that far off. And yeah I got a bit panicky!

I was gladdened that Doug Peacock did the same thing, as he wrote in Grizzly Years.

I’ve questioned if I was on the right course while hiking over snow. I worry easily. I don’t trust maps. (I mean, I don’t trust my ability to read them.).

[Matthew / BPL]

^that scenario scares me. Same with bearbags and midnight pees.

[David Thomas]

Reflecting on my missed trail junctions, when I THINK I can’t lost, on a substantial trail, sometimes I’ll miss a turn.  When I know I COULD get lost, like on a trail-less Aleutian Island, I pay a lot more attention.  I always know *about* where I am, which pass leads to the next valley, etc.

I often poo-poo compasses for the PCT, JMT, etc.  Or at least anything more than a button compass.  Yeah, I can triangulate off two peaks with the best of them, but the ONLY time I do it when I’m teaching someone how to do it.  But one time on Adak, with a low cloud ceiling (i.e. lower than the ground), I was hating my hunting buddy’s stupid Cabela’s trekking poles (because Manfred had run off with my nice ones), but I was loving the little compass in the top of the hand grip.  Every other step, there it was, showing me north and helping me not get turned around.  I’ve since debated adding a compass to the top of my trekking poles, although since this has only come up once this decade and maybe once last decade during a long night off-trail, I’ll just bring the button compass that can slip onto my watch band.  20 cents each in quantity:

[David Thomas]

“that scenario scares me. Same with bearbags and midnight pees.”

A reason for reflective guy lines?  I was impressed at GGG-X how very well tents and tarps show up at night with even small pieces of reflective line or a bit of reflective clothe.  Any light or even a mini-Bic shielded from your eyes could help you spot it from hundreds of paces away.

[Roger Caffin]

We cheat. Only one of us goes out at a time unless there is good moonlight. When it is dark, a simple call gets a reply from the tent.

You can also leave a tiny LED light in the tent. On longer trips we will each have a little LED light, so that’s easy.

Cheers

[Gunnar H]

This summer I was in a situation when I wasnt where I thought I was, and it really wasn’t good enough to know within a few hundred meters. It is descibed here:

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/europe-above-the-polar-circle-sweden/

(Above the photo of the frozen lake)

It was really never close to get dangerus since I kept calm and had made sure to have a backup gps map in the iphone even though I didn’t think I would need it. However if that had happend om my first trip I would have been in serious troble. And the brain started to play tricks with me even tough I stayed calm. In a way it is strange that you cannot at all trust your instinkts in such a situation – one of those situations that has been with mankind all the time – where you think instincts should excel? Maybe it got lost when our brains got smaller the last few thousend years? But thats straying off topic…

[MJ H]

I thought I was the only one who worried about not being able to find the tent at night. The woods are pretty dense around here. I also leave a light on in the tent if I’m going to have to go out of sight of it.

[Rex Sanders]

Roger wrote:

Being lost is a state of mind

Indeed. For example, I’ve missed a trail junction by a hundred meters and been “lost.” But hiking off-trail, I can be happy enough to know “I’m between that mountain range and this mountain range.”

Or take our current GPS-saturated world. Soon, self-driving cars will be “lost” and shut down if they can’t fix their position to within a couple of meters.

Same could be said of some people I know who barely ever look up from their smartphones.

— Rex

[George F]

Once I was off trail high on a hillside in the North Cascades. Going in I had used the valley bottom, which was supposed to have an old trail but was almost impassible so on the way out I went high hoping for easier travel. It was getting late, I found a decent campsite, put my pack down and doubled back to a spring I had passed five minutes earlier. Between the dense woods and steep slope it took me almost a hour before I could find my pack again . It was a small area and only an hour, I’ve been “confused” for longer than that, but I have never been more nervous about exactly where I was.

In general getting a little off trail doesn’t bother me too much, as long as I understand where the trail is. I think maps and knowing how to read them is essential, like Lester’s example of knowing what shape a valley should be.

[Todd T]

You can also leave a tiny LED light in the tent. On longer trips we will each have a little LED light, so that’s easy.

^This.  It’s a rare night that’s so dark you actually need a flashlight to go out and pee, but on even the brightest of nights, a dark tent can vanish.  And reflective guylines only work when you manage to aim your bright-enough flash/headlamp at them.  Part of my bedtime routine is to clip my little penlight to the tent ceiling so it’s there to set my tent aglow for the midnight bio-breaks.

[Paul Wagner]

Lost as in: Don’t know where we are and don’t know how to get home? Never.

Lost as in: hmmm.  We should have reached that junction by now, time to stop and figure out where we are?  Lots of times.  But I even in those, I’ve had a very simple plan to get out and get home. Partly because most of our hiking is in the Sierra Nevada, where navigation and weather are really easy.

Lost as in: let’s try to find that lake up the canyon….where the h3ll is it?  All the time.  I can remember at least three times that we never did find what we were looking for…but we knew how to get home.  The best one was one day two of a multiday hike in Yosemite.  We wanted to camp near a lake that was off trail, but could NOT find it.  I finally decided that it had to be down below in the canyon, and hiked down to look for it.  Got to the canyon, looked East to see where the lake might be, and saw nothing but trees and granite.  Turned around to the West to see how much daylight was left, and was blinded by the reflection of sunlight off the water of the lake, about 50 yards away.  LOL.

Was it John Muir who said that he had never been lost, but had been confused for a few days?  Or Daniel Boone?

 

[Jeremy and Angela]

I think the closest to lost I’ve come has been when I’m trying to find something that should be nearby.  My first real experience with that was cutting off trail to reach another trail.  Unfortunately I was using an older USGS topo and the PCT had long since been re-routed.

Knowing where I am to within 100 m or so is pretty simple; it’s finding one particular spot within that space that sometimes takes longer than it should.

-J

[Ryan Jordan]

This is a really important “Thing”!

Lights and compass bearings and accurate maps – they paint a partial  picture. We address this exact issue in detail in our Guides Course: https://backpackinglight.com/treks

But “trekking in the dark” (literally or figuratively) doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds.

It really is a state of mind and your success can depend on a lot of skills as much as on your decision-making prowess.

[AK Granola]

Sometimes you can avoid getting lost by staying put a while. I was camped in Denali years ago, up high. We went to bed under partly cloudy skies and woke up in thick fog. We couldn’t see beyond 30 feet or so, and the mist occasionally closed in even more. Although we were supposed to head back that day, we couldn’t begin to get our bearings so we decided to just sit tight. We ate, read, slept, told stories and waited. The following morning we awoke to a sprinkle of snow but the fog had lifted enough for us to be sure of the direction we had to go. Not scary at all but glad we hadn’t stomped off into the fog and gotten frustrated.

[Roger Caffin]

^^^
This is wisdom.
Better a day late than permanently late.

Cheers

[Erica R]

In my younger years I favored loops, which often lead to cross country sorta indeterminate travels. There was often a “Point of No Return” element to the adventure. Now I tend to turn around if I get to the Point of No Return. I find the travel interesting enough returning the way I came.

[James Marco]

Well, I have been ten miles off course a couple times. I HATE that. We did a trip from Watkins Glenn to Ithaca and got to a lean-to rather late. We had just set up camp when some people came from the opposite direction and passed by stating they were from Ithaca (5 people.) Soo, I didn’t bother to check the map in the morning and simply headed out along the trail the others had come up on. I nice foggy morning…we hiked till about 1000 before the sun came out. I didn’t pay any attention to the exact angle because the trees mostly shielded it. We hit a badly disorienting sign/trail intersection like the one we passed yesterday. Then I realized it was the same sign and we were headed the OPPOSITE way! Blindly assuming there was only two trails into the lean-to was the mistake. Our map showed only a clear in and out trail, not the intersecting horse trail/logging road/ATV trail back to Watkins Glenn (the one we were on looked like a well used logging road.) Checking the map/trail (which is often just a long green tunnel in the ADK’s and nearly impossible to get lost on,) we were about 10 miles in the opposite direction. None of this was “THE FINGER LAKES TRAIL”. It was one of the worst maps I ever bought. Our ride would be there to pick us up at 2100 that evening and we had 18 miles to go from the lean-to PLUS the ten mile mistake on top of the ten miles we had already traveled. We hustled, jogging at times on the downhills… We made it though a bit late. 38miles in one day was the most miles I ever logged and the most lost feeling I ever had hitting that sign…10 miles in the wrong direction…We were sore as hell the next day.

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