Getting Lost

The most important thing you might get out of this post is what to do when you're lost; also, because it's more likely you'll be in a search party than lost overnight, how to find other people (based on how they behave) when they get lost. Now that I'm a dad, this has become more important to me. Here is a link to a chapter from Lost Person Behavior by KA Hill. Another book by the same title that is even more frequently recommended is Lost Person Behavior by Robert Koester. I also recommend the master's thesis by Jared Doke available online for Yosemite search-and-rescue incidents, not all of which can necessarily be generalized outside of Yosemite.

This also prompted me to try to list out all the times I was lost. Here I list all the times that I remember being lost (I qualify it this way because those of us who like to think we're competent in the outdoors tend to block out our mis-steps.) I include times when I thought I was lost, which also counts for practical purposes - if you're going the correct way you planned to get where you want to go, but your belief about your position and direction of travel is incorrect, you're still lost - that is, if your belief about where you are and where you actually are don't line up, you won't be able to make good decisions about getting to your destination. The word for that is "lost."

Considering that I go into the great outdoors a lot to some fairly remote places, and favor going to new places over familiar ones, and have poor spatial reasoning, I really haven't gotten lost badly or often. I think this results from a combination of things:

• Since I've been in my early 20s I've consciously and religiously avoided off-trail travel unless absolutely necessary. (In Doke's thesis, going off trail, plus poor planning and communication - a sin I commit in many of my instances below - is the main contributing factor in over half the cases.)
• I know I'm a bad spatial reasoner, but I have a very good verbal memory - so as with most things, my reasoning about trails tends to be explicit and verbal, forcing me to really deliberately study maps ahead of time, announce waypoints to myself, memorize the turns I take and how they look.
• I have forced on myself several experiences to simulate how unpleasant being lost would be; among them, sleeping overnight in a snow cave during winter on the PCT.
• I do my best not to get overconfident, and realize that even on familiar trails, I can (and have) still become lost. Part of why I'm posting this is to organize my experience and make these instances are more salient and available in my mind when I'm making decisions out on trail in the future.
• Finally, my experience hashing has led me to pay extra attention to trails and how they might mislead you, deliberately or othwerwise. (Yes seriously. For example on this fiendishly clever trail I had to go out and look for people. The man who set that trail was a very bad bad man and when I find him I will bring him to justice.)

Times I Got Lost

Location: Sheerlund Forest, Cumru Township, Pennsylvania (Note: which is a commercial Christmas Tree farm where I now know Taylor Swift lived at the time, age 3. No we weren't stalking her, she wasn't famous yet, duh.)
Age: 19
Situation: During a snowstorm at night, a friend led me through deep snow to an old tower in the forest. (Note: the highest per capita search-and-rescue rate in Yosemite is in February and March when the most snow is on the ground.)
Mistake: Going out without proper gear (i.e. in blue jeans), lights, or preparation; considering (but not actually) going off-trail.
Resolution: After debating whether we should try to go back a different way, we just followed our footsteps in the snow.
Total time lost: ~2 hours


Location: Appalachian Trail area, Hamburg, Pennsylvania
Age: 22
Situation: I saw the highest hill in the area and set out to climb it by bushwacking, only to find at the top that I had climbed a smaller hill.
Mistake: I mistakenly assumed that going up in any direction would lead to the highest point, but of course that's only true if the slope you're on happens to be the side of the highest point. (If you're across the valley, it won't be.) Since I couldn't see the landscape, I had no way of correcting my mistake until I got to the top.
Resolution: Descend the way I came and give up since bushwacking sucks
Total time lost: 1 hour (more like just wasted)


Location: Desert west of Tucson, Arizona
Age: 24
Situation: On a business trip, I had time to visit a college friend and we went for a trail run in the Sonoran Desert.
Mistake: Friend had read about this trail but never been on it and we did not take a map, and had minimal or no water. In August. In Arizona.
Resolution: We tried the viewpoint strategy described in Hill, and tried to contain our panic when even from the top of a prominent peak we could find no sign of civilization. (I tried and failed to find a free video link to Cheech and Chong's Things Are Tough All Over where they also do some unsuccessful desert viewpoint finding and scream into the void, "We are in the middle of f---ing nowhere!") Based on his memory of the area my friend guessed that there was a golf course to our east, and after another hour, much to our relief we stumbled out of the sand and rocks onto the fairway, where the sprinklers were on - and shut off just as we ran toward them. (At this point I checked to be sure my name wasn't Sisyphus.) I got a bad sunburn and ended up missing my flight to my next destination, and when I finally arrived, I very professionally explained to the people I worked with there that I had been lost in the desert.
Total time lost: ~2 hours


Location: North face of Mt. Shasta
Age: 31
Situation: Tried to summit north face with a friend. After camping below the crevasse and not attempting the next morning for various reasons, as we descended we realized that the area at treeline was not the one we had emerged from on the way up.
Mistake: Descending an unfamiliar face of the mountain by a different route than we came up.
Resolution: We used the direction-sampling strategy described in Hill, setting our packs down in a spot we very carefully got waypoints for, so we could descend various sides of the hill we were on until we found either a creekbed that we could follow out or found the route we took up. We found the route we took up and descended that with no further problem. (Note: local terrain and climate matter in terms of optimal general strategies. Following a stream on the simple topography of a prominent stratovolcano is probably a decent general strategy to get you out of the wildnerness, but as K.A. Hill points out, following a stream in Nova Scotia is more likely than not to put you in a remote swamp far from civilization.)
Total time lost: 1 hour


Notice that everything from here on out - 5 instances - is on or around the Western States Trail, some of them during my run across California. I live nearby and run on them a lot, and it still happens! I can't blame Jim Walmsley for getting lost!

Location: Western States Trail Between Miller's Defeat and Last Chance, Sierras, Northern California
Age: 41
Situation: I got off on one of the many unmarked-on-the-map side trails.
Mistake: Not taking a map or GPS.
Resolution: Thank goodness that despite not having cell reception, the GPS locator on my Android still worked, and I continued on the (possibly unofficial) trail I was on. My wife was waiting for me at the trailhead and was about 20 minutes away from driving away from the trailhead to a spot where she had cell reception and could call 911. Long-term resolution was she made me get a satellite-based texting device, which is roughly the same cost as a GPS device but not nearly as much as a satellite phone.
Total time lost: 2 hours


Location: Western States Trail Between Duncan Canyon to Robinson Flat, Sierras, Northern California
Age: 41
Situation: I was actually on the true trail but didn't believe I was.
Mistake: Not having any way to verify whether I was on trail (GPS, etc.)
Resolution: Despite thinking I was lost, I continued on the trail. When I got to the top of the canyon-side I became convinced that I was completely lost, and at one point lost control and started shouting curses. Of course 100 yards later I came into the back of Robinson Flat Campground, mortified that people might have heard me both due to the nastiness of what I was shouting and their seeing me lose control of myself. The shame of it is that the river in that canyon is the most beautiful mountain stream I've ever seen but I ruined it for myself.
Total time lost: none, but believed I was lost for about 1 hour


Location: Auburn area trails between Maidu Drive and Black Hole of Calcutta Falls, Sierra Foothills, Northern California
Age: 42-45 (three times!)
Situation: Getting on the wrong trails as I tried to return to Maidu Drive
Mistake: I made a wrong turn, I think always too early.
Resolution: It's hard to get really lost since the river provides a foolproof point of orientation. In two cases I retraced my steps successfully and sampled routes until one looked familiar. In another I ended up coming up to the rim of the canyon near Auburn HS, mostly to get to civilization, and running back through the town a couple miles to my car.
Total time lost: 30 min/30 min/1 hour


If I remember other cases or my smart-ass friends kindly remind me, I will return to the post and add them.