Are you confident in your hiking partners abilities to help you?

[Mad Townie]

Not enough can be said about panic. Now I'm not inclined to panic, and I've been playing in the woods for a half century (yikes!), but one time about 15 years ago I was hunting with a couple friends and got hit with it.

I had fallen asleep in the midafternoon (that's how I hunt ), and I slept a little longer than I should have. I had everything: warm clothes, compass, map, some knowledge of the area (though it was fairly new to me), food, light, etc. I woke with a start and realized it was starting to get dark. My first thought was, "Oh no, they'll wonder if I'm lost." My second thought was that I should get moving, and I began to run through the woods in the direction I thought was correct, heart just pounding. Had the compass, but didn't look at it before starting!

It took me about a minute or two to stop, ask myself what I was doing, take a deep breath, check the compass and start WALKING in the right direction. My instincts hadn't been far off, but that incident was a great lesson in how panic can just hit you without warning. The most important skill at a time like that is to be able to grab that panic, wrestle it into submission and start acting rationally.

Got back to the other guys, they hadn't been out long and weren't worried.

Life is good.

 

[Lawn Sale]

I was also lost once in my life, while bow hunting for bear near Flagstaff lake. I knew I needed to head back, and started going in the right direction, or so I thought. The compass said it was correct, but none of the terrain looked familiar, so I checked it with my other compass. After a few hours and no signs of familiar trails or terrain, I was getting worried. The woods were thick with scrub, and it was impossible to see any distance. I started to panic, and like Mad Towne mentioned, it's unnerving to say the least. I remembered my training for Hunter Safety and sat down to reassess the situation, as it was now getting on twilight. As I stood up to look around I could hear a car in the distance, and it kept getting closer and closer until it passed about 10' from where I was sitting. I couldn't see the dirt road from the stump I was sitting on, and cursed myself for giving up too easily. As it turns out I was only about 20' off from where I thought I was, not bad, but it was a valuable lesson to learn.

And no, that one didn't come out in hunting camp that night...

 

[Kevin Rooney]

I do my best to hike only with people I trust. Over the years I've discovered a few who just couldn't/wouldn't come thru in the clutches - I don't hike with them anymore -life's too short. I don't hike with whiners, either. They drag down the energy of others, and become a liability.

 

[Neil]

Here's a story...
Me and my friend were bushwhacking in a tractless region in a huge empty national park in Manitoba, Canada. We were rank beginners and were learning our map and compass skills on the fly. At one point in our trek we sat down, grabbed a bite and carried on. After only a minute of travel I checked the compass and it was pointing almost 180 deg. the wrong way. We couldn't believe it, in fact we were "sure" it was wrong, it just had to be. We backtracked to our rest spot and carefully examined our surroundings, debated the evidence we had and, against all our instincts, decided to go with what the compass said. At the time, based on all the available non-compass data this made no sense to us at all but we did it. Our target was a lake and we followed the bearing through deep and thick scrub forest. We were far away from any road and felt like we were lost and getting more lost with every step but we stuck with that bearing for more than two stressful hours. As I'm sure you surmised we came out smack on target. That was a pretty intense lesson allright.

 

[dug]

Me? Yes.

My partner? Hmm...doubt it!!

 

[Nessmuk]

After only a minute of travel I checked the compass and it was pointing almost 180 deg. the wrong way....
As I'm sure you surmised we came out smack on target. That was a pretty intense lesson allright.

I've had similar experiences also. "Trust your instruments" is a common phrase flyers will say when disorientation rears its ugly head. If you don't, you die pretty quickly.

True, there are places in the Adirondacks where a compass may misread by tens of degrees for short distances due to ferrous deposits, but its very rare. I'd always thought most of the time when an old timer tells a story about the time his compass was wrong, he was suffering from temporary disorientation, like in Neil's story. It is possible for a compass to become reverse magnetized by 180 degrees. That's one reason why I carry a spare compass. In fact I carry 2 spares, just in case a friend loses theirs.