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My dad taught me to follow the water. It will lead out. That’s probably not good advice for some parts of the country. But would work well here in the Appalachians.
I did MS&R as a volunteer in the White Mountains (NH) over a couple of Januaries, ages ago. Found a few lost folks who weren’t really at any risk, and I once retrieved a pocket dog from a spot her owner could have easily climbed down to. But she was really cute. The owner, I mean.
The mind finds it easy to build false constructs and rest behind them. I have too much empathy, other people have different imbalances. God only knows what caught and held Gerry Largay. I know I could have found her.
Granny,
Our Rabbi tells a story. Maybe you could use it as you are in the same general line of work.
Once there was a man hurrying home through the forest. It was starting to snow. He must have taken a wrong turn and he got lost. He finally saw a light in the distance. When he got close he saw a small cabin with the light coming through the window. When he entered the cabin there was a fire burning in the fireplace, it was the light he had seen. In the cabin, he found food and water. As he got up to try to find his way home again he saw a small sign next to the fireplace. It read, “If you are reading this you must have got lost in the woods. Before you leave, please put some wood on the fire for the next person who gets lost so they can see the light.”
Unfortunately, the man was in a hurry to get home so he didn’t stop and put wood on the fire. Meanwhile, at home his wife was worried. She sent their oldest son out to look for his father. The son got lost in the forest also. Unfortunately, the fire had gone out so he never found the cabin and froze to death.
We are living in a society that doesn’t put wood on the fire for the next person or the next generation. Sooner or later that catches up to us. It would be nice if we realized we’ve been making mistakes before it’s too late.
Regards,
Jim
I don’t recall ever being lost in the woods. I used to wander into the woods on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. This is a beautiful area of pine-forested mountains in east central Arizona.
I do recall a brief panic of being lost, in a cave. We were caving with friends, and the group was turning around to return to the exit. My son and I stayed behind for a few minutes, to experience the complete darkness when we turned off our lights.
When we turned the lights back on, I was disoriented. The way out was not at all clear to me, and I had a brief period of panic. I did proceed, and found that I was on the correct path after proceeding a short distance. The panic was a very strange experience.
I can almost imagine feeling the same thing in the woods. I’ve always had a good sense of direction, for some reason — Boy Scouts, a map-oriented mind, whatever.
What a shame about Gerry Largay. It was an unwise idea for her to continue hiking alone, though I’ve done so myself. I’m older and perhaps wiser now, and might not do so again.
I would like to hear those.
If I get lost and I do have to move, I’m carving “Thataway” with an arrow in every third tree.
The only time I ever remember being lost in the woods, I didn’t know I was lost. There’s a big patch of woods back behind my uncle’s old farm, and I would walk back there all the time. It was bordered by lake and river on the west and north, and pasture land and highway on the east and south, so even if you were lost you’d eventually hit one of those landmarks and be able to find your way out.
I started at the north end by the river and decided to walk south until I hit the highway. Keeping this map in my head, I continued on “southward” until . . . I hit the river again. I had somehow managed to make a complete U-turn while walking and ended up heading in the opposite direction. As someone who prides himself on an innate sense of direction, this really messed me up, and clarified for me that it’s very easy to get turned around in the woods, even if you walk them all the time.
I haven’t seen you around Ricochet lately. When I saw your post caption, I thought it would be a personal story. I’m happy it wasn’t.
“I’ve never been lost, but I was mighty turned around for three days once.”
Daniel Boone
Drew,
In such a situation, even a compass from a box of crackerjacks could come in handy.
Regards,
Jim
Many years ago I had my two boys ages 5 and 8 on a trail in West Virginia wilds. I missed a blaze on a tree and before I knew it we were lost. I didn’t panic until it started getting dark and the 5 year old had to be carried. It was scary. Suddenly we came to a power line right away. Before I could decide which way to turn some kids on ATVs came along. They took us to their camp and their parents took us in their car to our car. BTW I probably would have turned the wrong way on the power line. Since it started as just a short hike we had no food or water. We were lucky. We were out for 12 hours. Thankfully the weather wasn’t a factor. Talk about falling back on my training, I didn’t have any.
I laughed.
When I was an Asst. Scoutmaster, we took a course in Survival. One of the main lessons I remember is the instructor saying that most people that were killed in the wilderness got into a situation and didn’t declare a problem early enough.
His example was hiking in the mountains when an ice storm came up. Instead of stopping and building a shelter, they went on until hypothermia took them.
The problem was worse with a group, since no one wanted to be “that guy” who declared an emergency.
There was an interesting article a few years ago, I have no idea where I read it, about the number of people that go missing in National Parks and National Forest and are never seen again – at least not alive.
Not sure if this is the article or not. I think it was longer. But the story sounds familiar.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2164446/leave-no-trace
There’s this one too.
https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
In all the stories recounting real emergencies – life and death emergencies – the people who survive are most likely to be those who acknowledge the emergency and act decisively. Right away. On their own behalf. Even if it means leaving people who don’t agree that here’s an emergency. Being “that guy” can save your life.
It’s common fodder for youtube:
I’ve never been “lost” (ten years later, I still insist I was simply “late”), but a friend and I had Search and Rescue out looking for us one night.
She and I were marathon runners and needed to get a big run in before the LA Marathon. We did most of our running on local trails; I’d seen on a map where if we got to the top of one trail we could go straight up over a ridge and drop onto a fireroad called the Rincon Rd. If we headed east it would eventually lead to another trailhead, where we could drop down into Monrovia Canyon via another fire road. For the record, the map in my head was perfect and we never took a wrong turn.
However … the process of getting over the ridge sans trail was arduous and time consuming. And while the map in my head was perfect, I had no idea how far east we could go before the road looped back west to the trail head. So we had thought we were going for a 20 mile hike/run; it was closer to 30.
Which is to say, we were hours and hours late. My husband pulled the panic button near nightfall and got in touch with a neighbor who knew every mountain and trail like the back of his hand. He in turn pulled the panic button, search and rescue was called; they even set up a command post!
Lucky for my friend and me, the weather was mild and we had enough light to see when we got to the trailhead. From there it was five miles down into Monrovia Canyon on a nice wide dirt road. No chance of a twisted ankle or a wrong turn. And halfway down, we knew there was an emergency phone that goes directly to the police department. I made the call and asked whomever answered to call my husband. When she called me by name and said, “oh honey, we’ve been looking for you”, I knew we were in big trouble.
They patched me through to the command center (doesn’t that sound dramatic) where a rescuer told us to stay exactly where we were and not move. They were coming to get us! I refused; said we were practically in our own backyards and we’d see them at the bottom. Plus, we were getting cold and needed to keep moving. Then I hung up. Legend has it, whomever I was talking to looked at the two husbands and said: which of you is married to Annie? I thought from the beginning this was a domestic issue and now I’m surprised it isn’t.
We continued down the road and met a cop car half a mile from the command post. Whereupon we made the biggest mistake of the day. We accepted the ride.
For a lousy half mile, it was and continues to be labeled a rescue.
You must’ve had some serious quadriceps, Barfly! I know some NH wardens who, during the height of the hiking season, are trotting up and down those freaking mountains all summer long…
Apparently, this is a very common phenomenon—we really do tend to walk around in circles. And we really do over-estimate our ability to navigate.
One of the people quoted in the article is a guy who counts as a genuine wilderness expert. And he says that when he got lost in the woods, even he freaked out. He said the urge to keep moving was so powerful, he had to consciously overcome it…
I was telling my daughter this, and she said it could be useful to know ahead of time that, in that situation, your mind is not trustworthy.
That being said, Gerry Largay did a lot of things right. She (eventually) stopped moving and set up camp. She stuck to her camp, and conserved energy. She even heard the planes and helicopters flying overhead.
Unfortunately, she over-estimated the pilots’ ability to see through dense tree-cover. Another pro-tip: If you are lost in dense, New England woods, find the biggest patch of sky you can, and plant yourself as visibly as possible smack dab under the middle of it. A human being is a small target—don’t count on the spotter catching a lucky glimpse of your purple sweatshirt under a lot of thick pines.
I have read if you want to disappear to start a new life, don’t fake a drowning. Real drowning victims turn up after a few days. Instead go hiking in rough terrain and simply disappear. Of course that leaves the problem of how do you get two cars (so you can leave yours behind) to your campsite without leaving a trace of the second car . . .
Then again I have never felt a need to disappear without a trace. So maybe I lack the necessary motivation to find out how.
One summer I was on a Sierra Club cleanup trip on Mount Whitney. A few of us went with the ranger to check out (actually he was dodging the Labor Day crowds, but he did have to follow up on his previous visit) an abandoned campsite at Iceberg Lake; the lake pretty much lived up to its name that year.
We started at our campsite on Mirror Lake after breakfast and hopped the ridge over to Iceberg Lake where we found a tent, sleeping bag and gear but no sign of the camper. We then climbed Mount Russell (a slightly lower but still 14,000 foot peak less than a mile from Whitney) and then went back to Mirror Lake. I never did hear what happened to the camper.
Huntington and Tuckerman Ravines are absurdly steep. If somebody’s going to get hurt on Mt. Washington, it’ll be one of those. Sometimes easier to take them up and down to Pinkham Notch than back down.
Fascinating reading, especially the index citation.
I did the wander in circles thing one time in the Maine woods, on a warm February afternoon. I set out to the north and maybe 20 minutes later encountered the same odd-looking tree that I had started at, coming from the same direction. Just like Pooh and Piglet, I encountered my own boot tracks. With that I figured it was time to be out of there and turned right around and walked back into my Grandmother’s fields, 40 or 50 yards away. Looks like that was a good decision. To make one grand circle in 20 minutes fits the 100 meter radius stated in the Wired article.
https://winnie-the-pooh.bib.bz/chapter-3-in-which-pooh-and-piglet-go-hunting-and-nearly-catch-a-woozle
One summer my buddies and I ran a 60 mile section of the Finger Lakes Trail, doing a 6-8 mile chunk every Sunday morning through the summer, leaving a car at the end of our next stretch and driving back to where we had left off last week.
The FLT is well marked, a blaze always in sight of the last one.
One Sunday we ran along and talked, as usual. After a while we began to get edgy, thinking we should be there by now – we had gone what felt like six mile or so, we should be coming up to the car by now. We kept running, because blaze after blaze.
At some point I began to discuss how, if you were lost in the woods, you would ever know? How would you describe to someone where you were? I’m by the big tree next to the big rock? By the stream?
We all began to discuss the futility of describing to a searcher where you were, and all agreed that it would be very difficult to realize you are actually totally lost. About 500 feet later we came out and with a great relief saw our car. Then we realized that it was our first car. Somewhere almost at the end of the leg we had gotten turned around without realizing it and started following the very familiar blazes, but back along our trail. We ran for six miles without ever recognizing that we had been through these woods just a half hour ago. Woods all look the same!
I think I had subconsciously been noticing, which is why I started asking about it. But 6 miles??
Also, if any of you have read the delicious A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, you will remember his wonderful take on this subject. He describes how just getting off the trail for enough distance for you to answer a call of nature can be extremely disorienting, and dangerous.
And this is why so many fairy tales have deep, dark woods in them with wolves or Fey or goblins or pirates. Never know what could be in the woods.
I have gotten lost in the woods twice. Once I did the “follow the water” trick, and it got me out. Worked well, although I was very far from my car when I got to a landmark. At least I knew where I was , though. The other time, I looked at my map ( I knew roughly where I was ), and saw that there was a N/S highway that I would hit eventually if I just went east . I had a compass with me, and the overland hike with no trail was rough, but I got to the highway. Had to figure out if I was north or south of my desired trail, but I eventually got back on the trail.
Great Book.
When I was a kid, I used to get lost in the woods all the time.
Looking back, it scares the bajeezus out of me—in general, no one knew where I was most of the time –the downside of those halcyon “go out and play, and don’t come back until supper” days whose passing we, here, so oft lament!
There was a creek that served as a general point of reference, and I usually used that to get me home again. In my wanderings, I saw a lot of interesting wildlife, and discovered cool features of the neighborhood that later became destinations—-a pool in the aforementioned creek deep enough to swim in, a craggy outcrop of rock we called “Big Rock” and then, when I discovered an even bigger outcrop, “Huge Rock.” Scaling the face of Huge Rock was a great adventure. If I had to guess, it was probably sixty or eighty feet high at its most impressive point.
I tried rappelling off of Huge Rock once. I had no idea whatever of how rappelling worked. Turns out you don’t just tie one end of the rope to a tree, the other end around your middle, and walk off the edge of the cliff. In my defense, my technique worked reasonably well until, predictably, the rock face became concave. I’d guess I fell about thirty feet? Two miracles: The rope was longer than the cliff was high, or my little skeleton would be dangling there still. And also, I landed in a relatively rock-free puddle of leaves, surrounded on all sides by the jagged pieces calved, over millennia, from Huge Rock itself. Landing on those would’ve been disastrous.
I was about eleven years old, all by myself, and no one would have the slightest idea where to start looking for me.
So, okay, I was an adventurous kid, and lucky. Also, one might note, just a tad under-supervised.