Lost in the wilderness?

[silentpaddler]

I have never been to the UK; most of my knowledge of it's geography is from reading this forum, and it seems that the areas of
proper wilderness are few. So does anyone ever get lost in the bush and require a search and rescue effort? Or could you, say,
get lost on purpose to employ your survival skills? Here we're in a remote-ish area by southern Ontario standards...behind our place
is about 5-10 thousand hectares of bush with no roads or houses, so you might get stuck overnight with some bad luck, but it's
nothing compared to the northern 75% of this country where you could be the only person in a thousand square miles.
There's a lot of talk about survival on this forum so it just got me wondering how lost you'd have to be before you end up in a
genuine life threatening survival problem. Love to hear others thoughts on that...

Jack.

 

[rik_uk3]

Getting lost is not easy in the UK, keep walking and generally speaking you'll come to a road or a house/village; nobody has got lost and starved to death in many decades so the skills employed by UK bushcrafters is really all a case of 'practise' because to all intent and purpose there is no real 'bush' here. Different ball game in Canada.

 

[Toddy]

Folk get 'lost' on the hills and moorlands...........they get turned around in the mist, or the snow and come up against something they can't climb down/over and get stuck. Every year some die, unprepared for the conditions.
The Mountain Rescue folks are busy all year long...........and I'm not just talking about Scotland, I mean all across the whole of the UK.
For a populous island group, there's a lot of wild land still.
It's not on the scale of Canada, but you don't need to go far wrong to end up dead
Lost ? well if you don't have a compass (or don't know how to use it) and you don't have mobile phone reception....... not everyone is as aware as many on this forum and others like it.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[wicca]

The problem for the people that are 'lost' in the UK is, it matters not whether they are in 5 square miles of Scottish mountainside, a Welsh valley or an English Fellside..they are lost just as they would be in 5000 square miles of Canadian wilderness, and occasionally some of them die, often within a short distance of safety and tragically sometimes because of their own attitude, ' just a short walk and we'll be back before dark/the snow comes/don't need carry all that kit..where do you think you are..the wilderness??'
Lot's of statistics here which give an idea of what the rescue teams deal with each year.
http://www.mountain.rescue.org.uk/media-centre/statistics

 

[Pandabean]

It can be pretty easy to get lost, especially in the dark when everything around you seems completely different to how it would be in the daylight, this has happened to me in the past when trying to find camp I couldn't and had to walk back to the starting point and try again, eventually getting there in the end with some help.

Now if you combine that with being on top of a mountain in a whiteout and carrying on walking it could be tricky unless you know what you are doing, if you don't you could be completely going the wrong way or even worse, fall off a cliff or walk on the wrong bit of snow and it could be fatal.

 

[mousey]

This sort of question depends on so much, like all other 'survival' sitiuations - Why you were out in the first place, what you have with you, how well you know the area, weather etc ad infinity..

Once I walked the Pennine way, as far as I know the longest continuous/ purposley marked route in uk. I took 2 and a half months [with many detours/ wanderings/ getting lost] with everything I needed on my back, through some apparently uninhabited place in uk. However as far as I can remember there wasn't a day where I didn't see someone/ a building/ some sort of sign of people.

So are for being really lost - I'm not sure It's possible in this country - just people going out totally unprepared and getting unlucky.

I'd love to go somewhere where there is a very real probability of not seeing anyone/ signs of habitation for weeks...

 

[Shewie]

Getting lost is not easy in the UK, keep walking and generally speaking you'll come to a road or a house/village; nobody has got lost and starved to death in many decades so the skills employed by UK bushcrafters is really all a case of 'practise' because to all intent and purpose there is no real 'bush' here. Different ball game in Canada.

Not so many folk die of starvation but broken limbs have stranded them and led to many deaths in the hills, any SAR site will show the figures to back that up.

 

[Jimmy Bojangles]

Not so many folk die of starvation but broken limbs have stranded them and led to many deaths in the hills, any SAR site will show the figures to back that up.

Very true, in my younger (dumber) days I used to jog over the moors around Kinder, frequently through snow in just shorts and t-shirt thinking I was fine as the running was keeping me warm. A couple of months ago while jogging in London my calf tore with no warning, it took me the best part of an hour to hobble the 3/4 of a mile back to my hotel. I now wouldn't go hiking/jogging on the moors without at the very least enough kit to allow me to sit down on any part of the trip and survive the night!

Cheers

Mat

 

[Mick w.]

Some poor bloke got stuck ina bog in the forest of Bowland recently and died. Found three weeks later...
The forest of Bowland isn't a 'forest' in the modern sense, (trees and everything; it's the original meaning of a royal hunting ground, which would presumably usually have trees on it - hence the modern usage!) it's low hills, moors and bogs and pretty bleak at times.

 

[EdS]

Forest is unenclosed uncultivated / unworked land. Not necessarily with tree - jsut in the UK the natural veg was woods, but naturally occuring moors & heaths would be forest as well.

 

[mousey]

So does that mean my back garden is actually a forest??

Cool...

 

[rik_uk3]

Not so many folk die of starvation but broken limbs have stranded them and led to many deaths in the hills, any SAR site will show the figures to back that up.

"There's a lot of talk about survival on this forum so it just got me wondering how lost you'd have to be before you end up in a
genuine life threatening survival problem."

The hills and mountains in the UK can provide extremely harsh conditions more often than not extremely exposed so getting caught out with poor kit or getting injured can easily mean needing help from the mountain rescue teams. Getting lost in woodland is not really going to happen over here.

 

[Retired Member southey]

a story from last year about one SaR station in Wales with some good figures,

 

[Bigfoot]

Being caught on the Cairngorm plateau in a whiteout can be deadly. You might not be lost in the sense that you will know roughly where you are but if you become disoriented, then each step you take could take you closer to fatal consequences. There are too many stories of bodies being found only a few hundred metres from safety, or at the foot of a steep runout.

For true wilderness, I reckon the north west of Scotland can still qualify, albeit not to the scale of anything in Canada. You can still travel for days on foot and not see anyone (although sometimes you might need to use cunning to avoid all human contact).

 

[Baggy]

Knoydart and the Cairngorms can be interesting, you would be in trouble with no navigations skills, and the weather can change very fast.

 

[21st century pict]

There was a plane that disappeared here a couple of years ago in NW Scotland somewhere, it was only a couple of weeks later that some hillclimbers accidently found the wreckage .There was also a couple of climbers that froze to death, their car and their climbing area was probably less than a couple of miles apart, probably a whiteout.
Sometimes it can be the easiest thing in the world to get lost. I think it was near Inverness a wee boy maybe 5-7 years old got separated from his dad .he was found the next day in a forest where he was sheltering for the night totally unfazed by the experience the next day he and his father were interviewed on telly, Question how did you get lost Answer went off chasing dinosaurs. Question were you scared Answer no I knew my dad would come and find me , Question were you cold Answer no I just cover myself up with leaves.
What a Star.

 

[santaman2000]

It seems the consensus comes down to an inexact definition of "lost." Few if any adults ever get lost in the sense that they may wander for days, whereas disorientation in a dangerous environment is fairly common. Accidents (that in and of themselves aren't life threatening) cause dangerous situations in remote areas? Am I getting this right?

Even without pouring over Mountain Rescue's statistics, I'd say that the simple fact that such an organization exists at all gives credence to the danger.

 

[Limaed]

There was a plane that disappeared here a couple of years ago in NW Scotland somewhere, it was only a couple of weeks later that some hillclimbers accidently found the wreckage.

Yes, I was on this job here is the report from the Herald if you are interested:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport...m-wreckage-of-their-missing-aircraft-1.197074

It was an interesting Callout in difficult conditions and the teams didn't have much to go on. The death of the two Aberdeen students I think your referring to was very sad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/nov/21/weather.students:

The facts is that despite living in a country without huge areas of wilderness our wild areas can none the less generate life threatening conditions.

 

[Shotgun]

I've thought about this too and it's a bit of a culture shock really. I'm very thankful for living in an area that has an abundance of wild areas and large areas at that. Little tiny pockets of forest here and there would drive me crazy. To get to the beach from my house I have to drive through 2 National Forests. Heck there's wild parts of the US and Canada that are bigger then the UK itself.

I for one feel a forest equals trees. The LA National "Forest" was one of the funniest things I've seen. Coming from old growth rain forests and seeing an area of little shrubs being called a forest was amusing.

 

[santaman2000]

...I for one feel a forest equals trees. The LA National "Forest" was one of the funniest things I've seen. Coming from old growth rain forests and seeing an area of little shrubs being called a forest was amusing.

A working definition for a "National Forest" in the US is an area set aside to GROW trees; maybe an area with mature trees ready to harvest but not necessarily. Those "shrubs" will grow.