Ever Been Lost?

[TheViking]

Have you ever been lost in the woods/nature? Tell about it!

I remember in 6'th grade, about age 13, we were skiing in Norway (my old class), in Lifjell. It was in the middle of the week and we were all heading home for the cabins. Our teacher told us to follow the markings (some yellow poles) all the way and then turn right when we came to the road. :roll:
But of course 3 of us, including me, didn't hear this (or didn't want to ) and we continued straight over the road and into the new way. We actually thought we had got it right, and therefore continued for about 500-600 m.

We took a stop, just to wait for the rest, but they never showed up. Strange we thought..... :shock: :?: Wan't strange cause now we were lost, we thought. (it turned out that we were only a shortcut away from the cabins) We waited for about 30 minutes and then decided to head back the way we came from, cause it was the most safest thing to do. We were tired from several hours skiing and now we had to head UP the way again. :roll: But we finally got up and got a pretty good overview of where we were.
Our teacher didn't get that mad, but a little. It turned out that we could have skiied down through a way and then walked up a hill and then we would be home, but we didn't know at the time. :biggthump

But I learnt something. To pay attention and use the head. It wasn't funny to be lost, but we were actually pretty calm. ack:

 

[Adi007]

No, never lost but I have been very, very confused for a while!

I'll tell you what's interesting to watch - and that's other people getting lost. Most people seem to get lost on the homeward part of the journey where they seem to think that the path that they took outbound will look the same on the way back. But because the position on the sun has changed (and thus the lighting) and they are looking at it from the other direction, things look substantially different and they start to worry.

There are distinct phases of getting lost:
1 - Looking around more than normal is the first stage
2 - Next comes the checking the map more often than normal is next (but not an effective map check, more like a 1000 yard stare at the map)
3 - Then bravado "I can't possibly be lost"
4 - Then uncertainty creeps in some more

They then oscillate between stages 2 and 3 until they are really lost.

 

[mercury]

Never been lost , but followed plenty of people who were :super:

 

[Moine]

Yup

I've never been lost either. Like my grandfather used to say, I always knew where 'I' was. Always 'here'. I've lost the way home a few times, though

Getting lost is something weird. As you walk, you always check for positive cues on where you are. There should be a stream there, a rocky peak there... etc. As long as you find your positive cues, no problem. But as soon as the positive cue is not where you expect it, 10 zillion possibles spring to mind. Might be a little further. Maybe I missed it. I must have made a mistake somewhere... Did that last peak really was the one I wanted to find?

It's actually very hard to positively be sure that you're really lost. You need very good orienteering skills to be sure you're lost... That's why most lost people keep on walking way too long. They just aren't sure the stream is not right over the next hill...

As soon as there is any doubt, the best thing is to trianglulate... or else backtrack

Cheers,

David

 

[tenbears10]

You are never lost only temporally misplaced.

However I have been misplaced for quite a while before now.

Bill

 

[Andy]

I have been lost in a way but I knew my way home. Sounds odd I know so I shall explain.
I was out for a walk with my then girlfriend in some woods which were a very short bus trip from her house. We needed to make our way back to the bus stop to get back to her house or we could have (and did) poop in to see her grandparents. From her grandparents the bus stop was easy to find. I didn't know the way to where we were going as I hadn't been there and she had lost her bearings.
I did know the way back to my own house as I had cycled in these woods. the trouble with that was that what takes 2hours on a ATB can take a very long time walking. That would have taken us into the night and I wouldn't have ben happy doing the journy without light.
I guess she was lost and I didn't know where I was going. The weather was good, I had a lighter and a lock knife so if worst came to the worst we'd have walked back to mine the next day

 

[alick]

Oh yes. ):

Sometimes quite deliberately - head into the woods and go where the whimsey takes me - worry about finding where I am and the way back afterwards.

Often misplaced. If you walk in the clouds on the top of the lakes, wales, kinder scout, bleaklow and the like there's nothing to follow and I can't be bothered to play leapfrog by compass.

Sometimes properly - I particularly remember trying to navigate the Pyrenees using guidebooks written by Kev Reynolds and I'm sure he and I don't inhabit the same planet !

Occasionally lost my mind too - but never in the hills

 

[RovingArcher]

Lost? :shock: Me? Oh yeah, plenty of times. Then the wife would find me and spoil it all. ):

When I was very young, an Uncle told me, "when in the woods, turn around and check your back trail so that you know the way home." I said, "yeah but I just go back the way I came, right?" He laughed and I figured that was that.

Two weeks later my Dad and I went for a walk and he says, "hey, why don't you go that way and I'll go this way and then we'll meet back here in a hour" and he showed me where the Sun would be at that time. 2 hours later when I'm a whimpering mess, he and Uncle show up with dinner and a soda. Uncle walked over and says, "sure am glad we found you, now you can help us find our way home. We got lost." :yikes: ):

 

[Adi007]

Great story! Thanks for sharing that!

 

[Nightfall]

Like my signture says "no matter where you go, there you are your never lost". I've been turned around a couple of times. Ok, maybe a few more than that. Never had to sleep out over night unless I have wanted to yet. There has been a couple time where I thought that I was going to. Last time was deer hunting, I went way past to where I was supost to come out of. Had to back track a long way. All this to the humor of my father in law. He kept telling me after wards that it was all a plan to get rid of me.

 

[bambodoggy]

Again, I'd never consider myself to have been "lost" but I've certainly misplaced the rest of the world on occasions! In theory you can't be lost as it's a finite thing and so you'd still be lost.
I have to say on those occasions when I have misplaced the world I've always treated it as an adventure and to be honest had more fun trying to find the world again (or at least the part of it I wanted to be at) then if I was just walking the normal route.... things are different and therefore more exciting.
As a summer mountain leader if I go anywhere off the beaten track I always carry overnight kit and emergency rations with me so being misplaced doesn't hold an awful lot of fear for me.
In the last year curiosity has got the better of me and I aquired an old military GPS off a mate of mine who's still serving and although I think I've only used it twice and that was to see how it worked when I first got it, I know it's always in the bottom of my bergan to guide me home if I need it....which so far I haven't.

 

[Realgar]

Only got lost once on the Long Mynd - I was actualy following a printed set walk but it had a mistake - 'Head directly West ( bearing 90degrees )' Wuh??? I can't remember which I believed but either way it was the wrong one nad it took a fair while to get back on track.

Realgar

 

[bambodoggy]

Oh, I forgot to say, I also try to believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of everything..... (those who have read the Dirk Gently books will know what I'm talking about).

He believes all things are connected in some way and treats navigation in the following way:

"If driving somewhere I haven't been before I simply pick a car that looks like it knows where it's going and follow it....I may not end up where I wanted to go but I always end up where I'm supposed to be"....

Think about it....works for me every time!

 

[C_Claycomb]

I have never knowingly been lost for more than about 5 minutes.

But I have mistakenly believed that I knew where I was going for a couple of hours before hand!!!! :rolmao:

I was heading home from Wales, taking the mountain road from Tregaron to Beulah and was navigating with by occasional glances at an OS map. I should have been paying closer attention to the map, but thought that the route was simple, and that I knew the turns I needed to make. I took a left turn about 100yds too soon at Nant y Maen and proceeded to drive w...a...y up into the hills of a forestry track.

I looked at the map a few times, but easily convinced myself that one bit of forestry was another. I finally worked out that I wasn't where I thought after a couple hours when I got to Strata Florida :roll: about 35 minutes drive from where I started :***:

I had a great time driving in the hills, lovely and quiet. :biggthump I still reckon that 9 hours to get from Tregaron to Hemel has to be some sort of record!

As they say, Assumption is the mother of all :***: ups. Too right when navigating!!!

 

[george]

A few years back I was on a small island in Indonesia, Pulau Karakelang. We were with people from the National Parks department doing some survey work on one of the mountains there. We set out early one morning to get up to an area where the forest changed to grassland - the walk should have taken a couple of hours. After about 3 hours we knew we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Turns out the Parks guys thought I knew the way and of course I thought they did, so we had just walked along with all of us thinking the other would tell them if we were going wrong!

Anyway they decided (knowing more about these things than I did of course) that we were being led astray by ghosts and that the only way we were going to find the path again was if we could hide ourselves from them. Now apparently if you take your clothes off and turn them inside out you become invisible to ghosts for a while (useful to remember!) and in that time you can find your path again. So we all stripped down, turned our kit inside out and got dressed again. Well suprise suprise it worked! We were only about half an hours walk from the area we were looking for, where we did the measurements found the route out and walked back to camp.

I'm still not sure whether the guys really believed that ghosts had led us astray or whether that night they had a good laugh about the "orang bule" believing their story, but next time any of you get lost you might want to give it a try


George

 

[bambodoggy]

Fantastic story George, I've now got images of our forced family days out to places of local interest when I was a kid with Mum and Dad screaming at each other over which way to go, my Dad with his short cuts and refusal to turn round ever and Mum screaming back that he can ****** well navigate himself.....then little me popping my head between the front seats and suggesting we stop at the next lay-by and all turn our clothes inside out!!!!!! :rolmao:

Then I guess waiting for the enevitable clip round the ear from both of them! :rolmao:

Many thanks, you've just cheered up my whole day with that!!!!!