Tips

[tar]

Leaving today for a siteseeing trip to Maine.

When I was a boy, a friend of mine's dad was lost forever hunting in Maine.

I was reminded of a time I was lost in the woods, near the lake where my friend and his lost dad had stayed in the summer. I was traveling a trail back to the old iron mines that I had traveled often, but had left the trail, lost the trail, and my bearings and had no idea which direction would take me home or back to the trail. The sky was cloudy so the Sun was not apparent. Moss on the trees did not seem to give me a good North indication. I did not know if I was traveling in circles or in the right direction or the wrong.

 

Then the "tip" occured to me. "Go down hill". My thinking was, that whether the plan would take me home was not important, but it "had" to take me to civilization, because eventually I would find a creek bed and if I followed it downhill, a stream, and if I followed that downstream a river, and that an ocean and following the coastline, one "had" to hit a city or a town. More than likely the plan would have one run into a road or a bridge or a house or a town, long before the river or the ocean...so I headed down hill. I found a small stream and followed it to a swamp. I followed the swamp border around to find its outlet and soon recognized it was the other end of a swamp I knew as "second lake". I was found.

 

So, the tip is, if you are ever "hopelessy" lost in the woods, and have exhausted all other methods of finding your way, go down hill, and keep going down hill until you find water, and then follow the water to civilization.

 

Regards, TAR

[CaptainPanic]

Note: I am no survival expert (quite the contrary), but I think this depends on the size of the area in which you are lost. If you know for sure that the area is limited in size, and that roads/civilization are within a few hours walking in all directions, then I would agree.

 

However, in certain cases (I'm thinking Alaska, and other seriously large wild areas), it may perhaps be better to stay put, and make a good base camp, hoping to be found rather than to try to get out yourself? I can imagine that in such a large area, your strategy will mean that you eventually need to cross fast-flowing side rivers, and that you are in some trouble when a river passes through a narrow gorge, or goes over a cliff.

[John Cuthber]

Mathematically, you are also in trouble if you are in a bowl unless it has a town in the middle.

Having said that, the strategy will get you to lower altitude- which is usually out of the reach of the worst weather, and if there is water anywhere it will be at the bottom of the bowl- though it might not be fresh.

 

Just a thought?

It's likely that many people will think as Tar did and try to go down hill.

It's also true that many of them will find the problem Captain pointed out.

 

Do search parties check the pinch points first?

For example, do they look at the places where a fork in the river would "trap" people who tried to make their way down hill?

[tar]

Captian Panic.

 

Had not thought of the fast flowing side river problem.

 

I had thought the only problem with my plan would be if I was below sea level (which I was not in New Jersey.)

 

I was a pretty good swimmer, and I never thought of water as an obsticle, more of a savior, providing something to drink, and a "path" to follow.

 

Even rivers with rapids, often have less violent areas where a wader/swimmer could pass.

 

Although it is likely that wild rivers would present many places where following them is not going to be easy, as you said, going through gorges and over cliffs, and through impassable brambles and thick undergrowth and swampy land and such.

 

In Maine, near the eastern most point of the U.S. (not including the far western Aleutian island that is so far West it actually is at an extreme Eastern position) we crossed a bridge into Canada (Campobello) where F.D.R. summered and were on a pebble beach where the high tide went right up to an embankment with heavy brush and brambles on it. At some places the beach was only 12 feet wide and I was concerned that we should hurry back to where we accessed it so the tide coming in would not force us into the nearly impassable bramble (Bay of Fundy has near 30 ft tides and things change rather quickly). We referenced a rock and found the tide was going out, so relaxed, but the point being, that certain combinations of terrain and flora are NOT condusive to passage. It is likely that my plan (or tip) would not be executable in all cases.

 

Regards, TAR