Lost & Found

[Bob Moulder]

With the discussion regarding the unfortunate circumstances of Geraldine Largay and what might’ve been done to prevent her getting lost, and what she might’ve done to effect a different outcome, maybe it would be good for others to tell about their experiences of getting lost and how they got themselves found again.

Jeffrey Armbruster related his experience of going down to a lake at dusk to get some water and then spending almost an hour searching quite anxiously for his campsite, quite relieved to find it.

I had a similar experience some years ago in the Catskills, at Giant Ledge, where at night I went ‘a short distance’ from the West to the East side of the formation to look at the night sky from an expansive overlook. It got a little foggy shortly thereafter and I started heading back to the tent. I had a headlamp but no compass, and I didn’t bother even taking a bearing because it was ‘only’ perhaps 100 yards to the other side. Well, I stumbled around in the fog for about 20 minutes, often thinking “C’mon, it’s got to be right here!!” before deciding to slow down and think of a plan. My camp was near the West lip of the ledge, so I decided to head in what I figured was a southwesterly direction until I reached the lip, then turn right (north), which worked — 20 minutes later I was back at the tent, also quite relievedI

SO…. how did you get lost and how did you get found?

[Matthew / BPL]

I, too, find bathroom breaks to be the biggest navigational hazard of backpacking. I’ve gotten lost at night finding my way back to my tent or hammock. I now have reflective guylines on everything including some Lawson reflective bearbag line. I’ve also got a small strip of extremely reflective tape on my trekking pones and bearcan. I rarely use a flashlight at night around camp but I keep a small LED lamp on a little loop of shockcord larksheaded to a belt loop so I can illuminate the reflective stuff if needed.

I’m more concerned about losing the trail when I go 50 yards off to relieve myself or gather water from a stream. In this scenario I’m less familiar with the surroundings and I’ve gotten turned around more than once. I’d like to hear some ideas on how not to have that problem.

[Katherine .]

Crossing a very braided stream, after finding a good spot to cross. when I got to the other side I had no idea where the the trail picked-up. I only got as far as the Um-OK-This-Is-Interesting phase when luckily a hiker coming in the other direction revealed the way.

Do people have a undue sense of modesty for #1? I rarely go that far off trail. At night I don’t even venture out from under the hammock tarp.

[Kevin Burton]

– Your modern phone (last 2 years) almost certainly has support for GPS. Even if you stay on trail – install it.. also, try to buy a phone with external batteries and keep a few as backups.

– Do some trail marking (mild) if necessary. I usually just draw a line/arrow with my heel or a stick on the trail. This can help mark your camp if you can’t see it from the trail.

– You can also do the same OFF trial by dragging your foot in the sand or laying down sticks to mark your position. Not exactly LNT but not too bad either.

– Practice keeping your orientation AT ALL TIMES. Try to always know what north is. Spatially it will help your brain realize where you are and should help you re-position should you get lost.

– Put a spare map/compass on your person. REI has super small 40g compasses which, while not perfect, are better then nothing if you get lost.

– Even on SHORT excursions away from camp, or a day hike, pack enough gear to be able to make emergency shelter, fire, etc.

– Know how to make a debris shelter. They really aren’t that hard to put together but if your tent/tarp is destroyed this can and will save your life.

– Know some basic primitive food gathering techniques. Snares, fish traps, etc. Can help for longer term survival.

We once found a father and daughter who were caught in a storm in Yellowstone and were off trail and borderline hypothermic. They were just going for a day hike and got caught in really horrible rain/lightning.

When we got there I was able to throw up a tarp and start a fire and throw my sleeping bag over them. After about 30 minutes I got some tea in them and they were fine.

They would probably be dead if it wasn’t for us though… we just happened to see them because I saw the girls red shoes move in the distance and I was curious what it was…

It was 2 hours before dark. Could have been bad. They were only 1-2 miles from the road.

[BlackHatGuy]

Missed a blaze on a trail in PA. Probably went about a quarter of a mile before I realized I was no longer on the trail. Could not find where I missed the blaze after retracing my steps a few times. Finally found it after the third or fourth time I retraced my steps. Probably lost about a half an hour, but was only a bit confused/amused, not panicky. Not sure if I had a map with me as I often didn’t when hiking in PA. I know I didn’t have a compass with me because I never carried one in the east (and haven’t carried one yet in the west).

A better story, but only told around campfires or kitchen tables, is when another guy and I got lost in the Iraqi desert during ODS. A bit of a pucker factor on that one. But, interestingly, getting lost might have saved my life. It’s a wild story… :-)

[Billy Ray]

I think the most important things for these short distance orientation issues (relieving yourself and water breaks) are:

1. make it a habit to ALLWAYs notice your surroundings (both fore and aft) and location of sun and shadows.
2. Don’t allow yourself to panic. Stop, take your time and make a logical plan to find your way back… This may include marking your current discovery of being lost location so you can make your way back to it if your plan does not work and then you can try another plan from the ‘original discovery of being lost location’.

I don’t mention navigation devices here because mostly people did not think to take a bearing or set a waypoint before going on these short diversions.

billy

[Jonathan Patt]

Where I hike, losing a trail—especially when on one of the less-used trails—is extremely common. A combination of little maintenance in recent years, fire, and flooding has led to situations where trails disappear with a fair amount of frequency. So when out on these trails, especially for the first time, it’s quite normal to walk along and inadvertently end up on a game trail that initially feels right but at some point becomes obviously not a Forest Service trail. Whenever this happens, I’ve so far never had any issues simply backtracking and then searching for where the real trail went.

I haven’t personally ever experienced getting lost when going off-trail to go to the bathroom, even if I go a moderate distance off-trail for cover. This may simply be due to a difference in terrain where I normally hike, but (as I mentioned in the other thread as well) I’m subconsciously adding landmarks to my mental map as I go along and so it’s easy to reorient myself and return to the correct location. Even if you don’t do this subconsciously, you can start to develop the habit by doing it consciously as you go along. Look around and identify noticeable landmarks whenever you have a view further out. If you stop to leave the trail briefly, be sure to look around and identify something distinctive you can return towards as you go along the way. If you’re using hiking poles, you could even put these standing upright along the trail as a point to return towards if you can’t see the tread of the trail from near your restroom spot.

[jscott]

A couple of summers ago there were hellacious blow-downs over a wide area of the Sierra due to a massive windstorm. I hiked into the largest blow-down I’ve ever encountered, by far, and started clambering over trees. Needless to say there was no indication of the trail. Happily I knew that I needed to find a bridge (which was wrecked on both ends but still spanned the river) and so I just tried to stay by the river–classic topographical handrail. It was on the other side that things got interesting. Not bad, I was familiar with the area so the trail was found once it left the forest. But blow downs don’t always allow you to go in the direction that you’d like.

The danger of puncture wounds in these blow-downs can be high.

[Jonathan Patt]

Regarding navigation devices, in my opinion your best bet if you want to use one to avoid getting lost is to simply turn on track recording on the device at the start of the hike so that you ALWAYS have a track showing how you got to your current location. If at some point you discover that you’re lost, you can just pull out the device and start following that line backwards until you reach a recognizable point. No waypoints needed, just backtrack along your track. It’s very useful if you have a fear of getting lost, and minimizes your need to be manually adding waypoints along the way at points where you may not yet realize you will get lost.

However, you shouldn’t rely on it exclusively. It should be a supplemental tool along with constant observation of your surroundings. And you also have to recognize that there’s a high chance the position of trails and other points on the map displayed on your GPS is wrong. Most are at least in some areas, and often have a low resolution of accuracy compared to what GPS technology can provide because they’re based off hand-drawn paper maps that were created pre-GPS. But so long as you can follow your track backwards, that’s what really matters.

[Jonathan Patt]

Regarding blowdowns/deadfall, I usually carry at least a small folding saw in areas where I expect to see this (e.g. my local stomping grounds, which had a major fire 5 years ago and is beginning to see significant amounts of deadfall) and will at the least cut off branches & stobs at the points where hikers need to clamber over the logs above the tread. This serves two benefits—it makes it easier to get over without injury, and it makes the location of the trail a lot easier to follow because you can see the cut branches on the trees indicating where it is. (Once a proper trail crew comes along, the full cuts on the trees on either side of the tread also serve as a fantastic indicator of where the trail is, which lasts for many years.)

[Lester Moore]

Twice in the last 10 years I’ve been lost or semi-lost, once on a 400 acre island while kayak camping North of Vancouver Island, and once by following a trail up the wrong drainage for an hour in the San Juan Mountains of CO. Getting lost on the island could have been avoided by keeping oriented (compass). In CO, maintaining a better estimate of our location would have done the trick.

On the island, my buddy and I went on a “short” stroll from our camp on the Western shore. It was a bright overcast day in a mossy, boggy, relatively flat, densely treed rain forest. We became disoriented after loosing site of camp and spend 45 minutes “exploring” the island trying to get back. Fortunately, the sun became more visible and we were able to orient ourselves to head West and soon made our way back to camp. Taking a compass and a quick back bearing would have saved us a bit of hassle that day.

In Colorado, we were hiking up a trail in a large valley with multiple similar-looking tributary valleys coming down from the right. The plan was to take a trail up one of these side valleys. On the map our planned tributary was the only one that had a trail. So after walking what felt like the right distance, we found a distinct but unsigned trail heading right up one of the tributaries. The topography looked correct, the side trail was very well used, and we felt like we had hiked about the right distance. So we took the side trail. After getting higher in the tributary, the trail got thinner and more vague. When we got above treeline we realized that the topography of the basin above us did not match our planned drainage on the map. However, it did match the drainage to the East. Fortunately we were able to plan a route over a ridge to connect up with our desired drainage and that worked out well. We should have done a better job maintaining an estimate of our position, and never made the assumption that the only major trails in the area were the ones shown on the map.

[Roger Caffin]

We don’t normally have any trails, so we don’t normally lose the trail  :-)

We travel as a pair, and we navigate in different ways. So one of us usually picks up when the other makes a mistake. That’s really helpful.

Night-time loo trips: one of us stays in the tent. A brief flash of a headlamp from inside the tent is an unerring guide to ‘home’. But you can do the same by leaving a tiny low-pwer LED light in the tent.

Compass: this is always tied to my shirt and around my neck. ALWAYS.

Cheers

 

[Matthew / BPL]

– Put a spare map/compass on your person

Good tip, Kevin. I keep my compass in my pack. It might make sense for me to keep a tiny one on my person in my pocket.

[Stephen M]

About 12 years ago my wife and I were above tree line on an Irish mountain in very thick fog.  We heard voices shouting and found two guys who where completely soaked suffering from borderline hypothermia, they were in an area with 800ft drops. We gave them some dry spare clothes and bought them down off the mountain and drove them to where their car was parked.

They did not have any navigation kit or rain gear and had not had drink in a couple of hours and had been walking in circles for at least 6 hours.

What really struck me is one of the pair could not open the zip on his thoroughly soaked military jacket so I could get a dry layer on him, I had to open the zip for him and take his jacket off.

When we got down below the fog and they warmed up a bit they told me they had heard voices and started shouting.  I then smiled as I told them I had been shouting at my wife to get in to a bothy bag to eat lunch as she did not want to get in to it.

[Mark V.]

I like the idea of this post as we can all learn from the experiences of others.

When backpacking I always have a map and compass with a route planed ahead of time, so I have had the good fortune to not become lost during these trips. The one time I was “lost” (more disoriented) was while car camping in a state park (it sounds ridiculous I know). We were abalone diving and staying at Salt Point state park on the ocean side of Hwy 1. It was late in the evening and nature called. As I poked my head out of the tent, I could see the rest room light about 100 yards away, but it was very foggy (I mean super foggy). Of course, this did not phase me as I could clearly see the light. I traveled to the rest room and did what I had to do and then stepped out and instantly the light went out. Now I was in total darkness (advanced darkness) and immediately lost all sense of direction. I knew that to the left of the rest room was a sheer cliff to the ocean below and if I went to far forward there was anther cliff just as bad. I figured that I would just walk from the corner of the rest room and I would run into a tent, or car, or road, etc. As I stepped away from the rest room my disorientation became worse as I could not see the ground due to the fog and dark, and I could hear the ocean all around. I turned around to head back to the rest room and realized that it was no longer visible. I was standing in an eminence void of pure black. So I had to do the only option left. I called out and woke people up. As I did, lights went on and people started yelling, getting pissed. But this was all I needed to reorient myself and make it to my tent safely. Stupid I know…

[Bob Moulder]

But you can do the same by leaving a tiny low-pwer LED light in the tent.

Good idea. Those 9g Photon Freedom lights have a flashing mode that uses an extremely small amount of power. In the past I’ve used the flashing mode on a Petzl at camp when expecting some late-arriving members of our group, pointing it in the general direction they would be approaching from.

However, as Katherine said above, I never venture more than a few steps away from the tent for #1.

 

[Dena Kelley]

The only time I can recall being lost was on a backpacking overnighter. The fact that we had overnight gear saved our bacon. We had started on a bluebird July day, beautiful sunny skies, on a hike in some local mountains. We planned to traverse up one set of mountains, camp, and walk out a valley path the following day. Just as we summited the high point, a dense fog rolled in. It began to rain, then snow. We became completely disoriented. We tried to follow the “trail” but the trail at the top of this mountain was hard to see. We lost our way. We finally decided to pitch camp and figure out where we were in the morning. There’s more to the story than that- I ended up soaked and hypothermic- but I’ve told that in another thread. The next day we found out we were a full mountain away from where we had planned to camp. We had to backtrack to find the valley trail out. That trip could have been deadly if we had just been out for a day hike with no overnight gear.

Personally I have a very poor sense of direction. I have never gotten lost going to the loo, but I’m careful to look behind me when I walk off trail and to keep looking back to keep my bearings. On hiking and backpacking trips I nearly always carry a GPS and a compass/map. The GPS gets a lot of use when I’m in flat areas with no terrain features to orient off of.

[Valerie E]

Although it rarely happens to me in the backcountry, I frequently lose my car in large supermarket parking lots filled with giant trucks/SUVs (they dwarf my little Honda Civic)!

Maybe I should try some of these suggestions to reduce my wandering around hot parking lots with heavy bags of food… ;^)

[Diane Pinkers]

Two times I’ve been “lost”–once was with my boyfriend, hiking around the Three Sisters loop.  On our first full day on trail, I didn’t read the map closely enough to identify a right  angle turn in the trail, and we went marching straight on a short spur trail up a rocky hill.  Still don’t know why the heck there’s a trail there, why would you go there?  It’s not a climbing destination.  Anyway, we could see the trail down below, and thought about bushwacking towards it, but that would have put us on the loop backwards.  Ended up backtracking and finding the turn.  There had been a line of rocks sort of across the trail, and close inspection showed where they had been nudged out of place.  If they had been more lined up, we wouldn’t have stepped over the line, and probably seen our turn.

Second time was by myself, going around the Timberline Trail.  Crossing over Newton Creek (I think), I could not see the trail on the opposite side of the moraine (working clockwise from Timberline Lodge).  I cast around upstream and down for a goodly long time, getting pissed and frustrated, not finding anything.  Finally started working my way away from the creek, ended up in an area of tracked-up sand, thinking that I might cut the trail, which the map showed was going parallel to the moraine for a bit.  Then I started finding a couple of fire rings.  Finally I noticed on my Earthmate app that there was a trail marked to the north, and slogged my way towards it. Sure enough, the trail was about where the mark was on the app.  The on-line description on Oregon Hikers says that the other side is directly across from the crossing on the East side.  Well, I must have crossed at the wrong spot, because it was further up the moraine than where I crossed.

I used to carry a fire-starting kit, Photon Freedom, whistle, SAK Classic, and a small pill sized ziploc with a quart Ziplock and a few water purification tabs in my skirt pockets, so that it was with me AT ALL TIMES, even if I took my pack off.  I stopped carrying that stuff in my pockets, because it seemed too paranoid, that I was never far from my pack.  Maybe I better reconsider…..

[Roger Caffin]

Ahem, yes – Valerie is right. A short-wheel-base (2-door) Landcruiser hidden among all those much longer 4-door 4WD wagons and people movers …

Cheers

 

[Justin Baker]

Why would you ever need to pee out of eyesight of your camp? I’m usually too tired to shuffle more than 30 feet away.

[James holden]

from the BMC

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/help-or-hazard-why-gps-may-be-leading-us-astray

Studies around the world have indicated that using GPS for navigation – even when it’s done properly – can leave us with less knowledge of where we are, not more.

People subconsciously build up a mental map as they move around, but it seems to be that, when they are following directions from a GPS they are not registering their surroundings in the same way they would have to when using a map and compass.

One city-based study indicated that walkers using GPS had less memory of a route than those who had followed the same route using a map. And another study concluded: “GPS eliminated much of the need to pay attention.”

It seems to be clear from these studies that people using GPS for navigation just aren’t building a mental map in the same way you do in traditional map and compass navigation, where you are constantly relating the map to the terrain around you.

 

more at link …

;)

[Lori P]

Over the years I’ve been backpacking I have run into a lot of people lost out there — when I was a SAR volunteer the way some of the folks we looked for handled things astounded me. Some people develop mental maps and stick to them, even believing the compass to be broken rather than to change their belief. People rely on cell phones and find that even if there is a shred of a signal they cannot get out to anyone. In all the time I was in SAR we never once used a GPS coordinate pulled from a cell phone pinging a tower — I suspect that while this is possible it was just never done, because we had such a good record for finding people within the first day or so, as we trained for and often did deploy at night when people tend to stop walking. (I don’t believe that anyone but the Fresno team does this — the park teams definitely don’t.)

Leaving an itinerary (reconn.org can help you organize the information — a very well informed form) and doing some preventative “stay found” efforts is still very much needed. Don’t put yourself in a situation when the electronics, whatever you have, is your last resort. For all the “reliability” of the two way devices, I have seen them fail utterly, and been part of the effort to find a person who relied solely on them. One of the first callouts I was called for (I couldn’t go) was a party who knew well enough what the weather would be, went out for five days, found that the system blew in a few days early and then they were stuck in a whiteout at high elevation — they tried to use the GPS in a whiteout and were picked off a ledge two days later when the weather cleared and the chopper could find them. It was a stellar example of someone who believed so much they knew how to use a GPS, and yet…

Water bars all over Yosemite have little use trails that wander off into the woods. Instead of stepping over them, people walk along them and out into the trees. We lost a woman on a switchback going up to Ten Lakes one time — she didn’t stop walking when the use trail from a water bar on the end of a switchback petered out. She ended up being found by a cross country backpacker coming down from Grant Lakes, who returned her to the trail about twenty minutes after we noticed her missing. I shudder to think how far she would have gone if he hadn’t found her.

There are bears in Sequoia NP that steal backpacks, so the rangers will tell you not to leave them sitting anywhere. We were on the High Sierra trail when a companion decided to stop to pee — she and another hiker were ahead of me, out of sight, when they did this. He came back down and continued to the junction of a connector trail that ascends toward Wolverton, and when I caught up to him she wasn’t there, and he was confused. He remember her going a ways off to be separate from him and pee, but she didn’t return. As it turned out she had come down the hill at a different angle, hit the connector trail instead of the main trail without realizing it was not the main trail, as she had not gotten to the junction yet, and continued uphill knowing we would be going up before getting to Crescent Meadow. We waited at Panther Creek eating lunch and waiting — waited and waited, and then figured, we would find her at Wolverton when we went back on the shuttle to get a car, or at Crescent Meadow, or she had perhaps fallen down the steep hill in which case we would need rangers anyway — she caught up to us. Out of breath, upset because we “didn’t wait for me” — she had run into another backpacker and gotten a correction. She had a map. She even had a fair idea of the lay of the land. What she didn’t do was return to the trail the same way she had gone out, and missed a junction. Assumed that since the HST is running along that hill, traversing, she would hit it again. If not for the bears she would have left her pack on the trail and then returned to it — and nothing would have gone wrong.

Largay did as a lot of people do, say “I’ll just stay on the trail” — I know that doesn’t work as well as people like to think, for the reasons that are obvious in her story. It just isn’t that simple. Thousands of people get out there and come back, some with stories of unintended adventures that for some can be a wake-up call — then there are the ones who almost make a religion out of pushing their luck. You can make the same choice repeatedly and be fine, until that one day that that choice ends with a bad situation and more bad choices, and unfortunately, once you’re caught in that situation you can’t go back and undo the initial mistake….

What stands out to me most, as the most common thing in those who get into a lot of trouble, is complacency — I’ve done this a hundred times, I won’t have problems. I’ve gone pee a thousand times, I’ve gone without emergency kit hundreds of times, I’ve gone without a tent a hundred times…. I have all these trainings, I won’t get lost.

I’ve trained people in map and compass — and I still tell people signing up for things on my meetup group that while I am a fairly confident navigator, I am not immune to poor judgment and people who come with me are better off having those skills as well, on any trip involving off trail segments. Because it’s true. No one is immune — I may never have gotten lost, and I may have a good sense of how to get up a steep route, but that doesn’t mean my number won’t be up next time I try, and I really don’t want a group of people relying exclusively on me. What if I get to the middle of the Tablelands and fall down, lapse into unconsciousness? Who’s going to get back to Pear Lake for the ranger then?

[David Thomas]

When I was new to caving, I definitely stuck close to people who knew their way around.  Twice on a return, even knowing “the route leaves from this end of this room” it took some time and head-scratching to find it.  I’d emerged into the room and gawked at its size and features without looking behind me to see what I’d just come out of.  The tunnel into that room had emerged from under a rock.  Ever since, I’d keep loping backwards throughout the trip in to see what things would look like on the way out.

That’s a handy trick on the trail as well: As you leave a tricky bit (covered with snow, over bare rock, at a trail junction), turn around and imagine yourself returning the other way.  Ideally imagine what it will look like as the sun swings around or it gets dark.

The most lost I’ve felt in Alaska was during a pre-dawn start to a hike on Adak (a grassy volcanic island in the Aleutians).  No moon, cloudy, absolutely dark without any city lights, roads, etc as a hiked along a large off trail.  I had a pretty powerful light, but even being able to light up a hillside 500 feet away did help our situational awareness very much.  Two hours in and with increasing fuzziness about our location, we curled up for a hour, dozed a bit, and waited for dawn.  At daybreak, we were where we thought, aimed for the correct pass, and continued on with confidence.

I’ve done hundreds of miles of hiking in the dark, but almost all of it on trail and/or with a bright moon.  Off-trail, on a dark night?  GPS would really shine, but even units that supposedly have Alaska maps on board are sketchy when you’re much closer to Russia than to Anchorage.  And for Attu?!? (so far west, it’s the easternmost part of the USA).  Scrolling to from the east (North America) on some apps, and you can’t cross 180W/E.  Scrolling to it from the west (Russia) and it doesn’t show up at all.  Grrr.

[Author]

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