Have you ever been lost in the forest in real life?

[Ryan CM]

What was the situation? How did you get back to safety?

[pikkue]

Well, I went on walking straight ahead. Germany is populated much too dense to get lost I think

[harobed1156]

My first home of my own was 28 acres in southern Vermont that backed up onto the Green Mountain National Forest. It was old timber land with no fences, roads, etc... (but there was an enormous, very cool old beaver dam!) My land was several miles uphill a mud road with three or four old homes on it, and up beyond my place, you could only build vacation homes, no permanent residences were allowed. The road eventually intersected the Appalachian Trail. This was about 30 years ago.

I was building a small cabin, living in my van while building, with my first pit bull Max as a companion. Max took off like a bullet after something and uncharacteristically refused to stop and come back on command. I ran after him, and after a long chase listening for his insane barking, I found him furiously trying to climb a tree. There was a little black bear up there! (Not cub-sized "little", the locals called 300 lbs "little".) I snapped on his leash and started dragging him back home, terrified of the bear, or possibly its momma... really wasn't sure about bear sizes.

After an hour or so I came upon a gigantic spruce growing over a rock that I'd already passed - yep, walked in a circle. :? I knew the mud road ran roughly east-west, so I had to go south. Using the sun, I guessed at "south", chose a tree to walk to in that direction, and repeated many, many times. Once we found the road, it was less than an hours walk home. Obviously, I learned not to assume that I knew where I was in the woods.

After that, I kept Max on a long chain, and always kept a compass around my neck.

[Incariuz]

I've never really gotten lost in the woods, I've been roaming them since I was like 4. I've always had a thing for just walking through forests, and I've always been good at remembering all the little visual details of everywhere I go, so I always find my way back.

[elloco999]

I've never been really lost, but some ten years or so back some friends and I were hiking in Scotland and we'd been following a trail along a lake that ran into a dead end. The light was already starting to fade and we new we had at least 30 min to go until the next town where we planned to spend the night in the hotel. We were all beat as we were absolutely not used to walking such distances and were all carrying over 20kg in our packs.

Going back to the last village was not an option as we passed that over 4 hours earlier. We discussed whether to go back to the road we new would take us to our destination, but that would mean going back for some 30 min to get to the road and then we still would have to walk all the way to the village. We could have camped out in the wilderness (not permitted in that area) but with limited amount of water and no way to purify (not so smart, I know) and none of us felt like setting up camp with the promise of a hot meal, hot shower and warm bed so close. So we decided to try and make our way through the forest.

Because we were all so tired, none of us were paying much attention to where we were going. We were following a little path, really just some trampled grass, that had led us away from the lake and didn't seem to go anywhere. Not wanting to get really lost we went back to the lake and followed it's edge until we found a decent path again and followed that to the village. We were save!

We went to the hotel and guess what..? No rooms available! Normally they would not even have 1/3rd of the rooms rented out that time of the year, but now they didn't have any room whatsoever. And it was the only hotel in a 20 mile radius (no B&B's, pensions or campgrounds either). But the hotel owner told us there was a couple sitting outside who had also just arrived, hikers like us. He had given them the phone number of some people who were building a B&B a little up the mountain who might have some place for us to crash.

So we went outside and talked to the couple. They were also Dutch as it happened and were just calling the people of the B&B. Sure enough, we could all stay at the B&B if we didn't mind they were in the middle of renovating the small church that was to become the B&B. At that time we would have been happy with a hay stack to sleep on! The owner even offered to come pick us up with his van.

As we arrived at the B&B 20 min later, his wife (who turned out to be Dutch as well, go figure) was already cooking us dinner. We all had a quick shower before dinner. Never did a shower feel so good! Nor did a dinner ever taste so good, even if it was just a simple meal as they hadn't expected any guests since they hadn't opened yet. We spend that evening talking and playing games. At the start of this story, we all thought it was turning out to be one crappy day, but it ended up being the best day of our trip! Yeah, good memories

I did learn a few things from that adventure though.

1. Don't carry too much stuff with you. My pack was 22kg and that's way too much if you're not used to it.

2. Train more before going on a long hiking trip. Walking 2-3 mile a week is not the same as 10-15 miles a day in mountainous terrain!

3. Do carry some way of purifying water. We could have boiled some water if we'd started a campfire (illegal in the woods in Scotland) but a small water filter is much easier, doesn't take as much time, doesn't take much room and hardly ways anything. I always carry a Sawyer Squeeze mini on hiking trips now and some purification tablets as a backup.

4. It's a good idea to have some emergency food with you, just in case. I generally keep some granola bars/ trail mix and often some "just add water" instant meal.

5. Make sure you have a map of the area (and know how to read it!) and a compass (and know how to use it!). Nowadays this may seem less important as we all have GPS on our phones. But still a (small) compass as a backup is a good idea, the battery of the average smartphone drains pretty fast.

6. Keep you're spirits up! (Can you imagine how we felt when we heard there were no rooms at the hotel?)

[Ryan CM]

I've never been really lost, but some ten years or so back some friends and I were hiking in Scotland and we'd been following a trail along a lake that ran into a dead end. The light was already starting to fade and we new we had at least 30 min to go until the next town where we planned to spend the night in the hotel. We were all beat as we were absolutely not used to walking such distances and were all carrying over 20kg in our packs.

Going back to the last village was not an option as we passed that over 4 hours earlier. We discussed whether to go back to the road we new would take us to our destination, but that would mean going back for some 30 min to get to the road and then we still would have to walk all the way to the village. We could have camped out in the wilderness (not permitted in that area) but with limited amount of water and no way to purify (not so smart, I know) and none of us felt like setting up camp with the promise of a hot meal, hot shower and warm bed so close. So we decided to try and make our way through the forest.

Because we were all so tired, none of us were paying much attention to where we were going. We were following a little path, really just some trampled grass, that had led us away from the lake and didn't seem to go anywhere. Not wanting to get really lost we went back to the lake and followed it's edge until we found a decent path again and followed that to the village. We were save!

We went to the hotel and guess what..? No rooms available! Normally they would not even have 1/3rd of the rooms rented out that time of the year, but now they didn't have any room whatsoever. And it was the only hotel in a 20 mile radius (no B&B's, pensions or campgrounds either). But the hotel owner told us there was a couple sitting outside who had also just arrived, hikers like us. He had given them the phone number of some people who were building a B&B a little up the mountain who might have some place for us to crash.

So we went outside and talked to the couple. They were also Dutch as it happened and were just calling the people of the B&B. Sure enough, we could all stay at the B&B if we didn't mind they were in the middle of renovating the small church that was to become the B&B. At that time we would have been happy with a hay stack to sleep on! The owner even offered to come pick us up with his van.

As we arrived at the B&B 20 min later, his wife (who turned out to be Dutch as well, go figure) was already cooking us dinner. We all had a quick shower before dinner. Never did a shower feel so good! Nor did a dinner ever taste so good, even if it was just a simple meal as they hadn't expected any guests since they hadn't opened yet. We spend that evening talking and playing games. At the start of this story, we all thought it was turning out to be one crappy day, but it ended up being the best day of our trip! Yeah, good memories

I did learn a few things from that adventure though.

1. Don't carry too much stuff with you. My pack was 22kg and that's way too much if you're not used to it.

2. Train more before going on a long hiking trip. Walking 2-3 mile a week is not the same as 10-15 miles a day in mountainous terrain!

3. Do carry some way of purifying water. We could have boiled some water if we'd started a campfire (illegal in the woods in Scotland) but a small water filter is much easier, doesn't take as much time, doesn't take much room and hardly ways anything. I always carry a Sawyer Squeeze mini on hiking trips now and some purification tablets as a backup.

4. It's a good idea to have some emergency food with you, just in case. I generally keep some granola bars/ trail mix and often some "just add water" instant meal.

5. Make sure you have a map of the area (and know how to read it!) and a compass (and know how to use it!). Nowadays this may seem less important as we all have GPS on our phones. But still a (small) compass as a backup is a good idea, the battery of the average smartphone drains pretty fast.

6. Keep you're spirits up! (Can you imagine how we felt when we heard there were no rooms at the hotel?)

I am glad you made it back! Thanks for your story!

[Willbonney]

Like many others here, lost, eh, not really. I worked for Alaska Fish and Game for a spell, and helped out on quite a few search and rescues. Much of Alaska is quite a bit different than the rest of the U.S. in the fact that there really is only a few different ways to get around to many of the communities up there. There aren't many roads, so ATV/4-wheeler in the summer, snowmobile in the winter, a boat, or flying. Flying is the most common. Mostly single engine Cesna's, flown more often than not by college-aged kids who came up to AK to learn to fly. So not exactly common for them to go down, but not exactly a rare occurrence either. I believe aviation accident rates were something like twice the national average, at least I remember hearing that once. Found this with google: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/1 ... 79654.html

So though I've never personally considered myself lost in the woods, I've tried to help several who were. The only crash I was ever in was back in 2008, I was on my way to Chefornak, AK when the plane stalled for some reason. It was just me, the pilot, my gear, and some packages for the village in the plane, and down we went. The kid stayed relatively calm though, and put it down rather hard on a frozen river bed. It pitched a bit when the wheels dug into some deep snow and the landing gear was ripped off, but we came to a stop shortly after. Once we figured we were all right, and he had ensured the plane wasn't leaking fuel, I grabbed my gear and we set off. The nav still worked, and we knew Akiak wasn't more than 8 miles to our south west, so it wasn't a big deal really. We were met a few miles down river by a couple villagers on snowmobiles who heard the distress call over the radio from Akiak, so hitched a ride with them into town where we were given some coffee and we waited for the next plane to touch down there. I then got a new ride from there to Chefornak and I guess the pilot stayed on until the plane returned to Bethel. No idea what happened to him.

[AmericanSteel]

I was lost once as teen and then a few times as an adult. One of my more memorable times was when I was stationed at Ft Carson in Colorado Springs. I was driving my Camero in February through some back woods toward a hunting camp, where I was going to meet some guys on a 4 day pass to do some hunting. I did not have a rifle, though I was packing a .357. I took a wrong turn and drove about 2 hours down a snowy side road. Around 8 PM, in the rockies and snowing like crazy and I slid off the road. Hopelessly stuck. I was wearing winter clothing, a hunting bag packed, winter sleeping bag and that OD green wool blanket they issue everyone in the service. Gortex coat, materhorn boots, old BDUs, thermal underwear, 2 MRES, a 1 quart canteen (full), an empty 2 quart canteen, my pack, field hatchet, hunting knife and my pistol (with a speed load of extra rounds). I also had a combat medic bag and two bottles of vodka (uh, for the camp.. lol)

I learned a lot when I was deployed to Canada to help train the Canadians MPs in working with Army MPs, preparing to go to Bosnia. I also had my share of cold weather training and I no fresh turnip that fell off the truck. I saved my supplies and hunkered down in my camero, after making sure the tail pipe was unobstructed, and waited until morning. Next morning I could not even see a road. Turns out I was going down a logging trail. And I was HOURS away from my turn off. This was pre-cell phone for most and it would not have worked where I was anyway. I was heading SW and knew the main road was NE. I made a fire bundle using some old plastic, medical gauze and tightly wrapped para-cord. I then left a note in my car, broke my MREs down, packed the trash for leaving a trail and started walking.

I walked for three days heading NE cross country. I ate sparingly from my MREs, boiled water in my canteen cup and did some light foraging on the way. Made it to main road and got picked up by a semi hauling paper products. Got dropped off at a Sheriff's Dept and they ferried me back to Ft Carson. No one even knew I was missing. Guys who went to the hunting camp just thought I deceived to go to something else. I went out with Deputy who was on the Search and Rescue team to get my Chev. Took forever to find my bad turnoff. She said they would have never found my car or probably even look down that road.

Goes back to the mantras:

1. Tell someone you trust where you are going and when you plan on being back

2. Plan and Prepair to live, because failing to prepair is a receipe for failure

3. Keep you wits about you

4. Make a decision to stay or leave, then execute

[elloco999]

Wow, that's some story!

It's a good thing you didn't decide to wait in your car until someone would find you. With no one looking for you and no traffic on that road you'd still be there

[AmericanSteel]

I think the biggest thing that saved my bacon is preparing for a hunting trip and I was geared up to be sleeping outside. Also, the local command was REALLY big on being prepared. Everyone with a car in my unit was ordered to leave their OD Green Blanket in their car, a gallon of water and two MREs. We also had mandatory vehicle inspections before a pass or vacation, the gear was checked. I always had my Medic Bag in the car, my field ax and my hunting knife. It turns out my poncho and woobie (ponch liner) I actually left in my field pack and did not have in my car. I usually carry both. That said, my medic bag, ax, knife, ponch, woobie, a pair of MREs and a gallon of water at in the back of my Honda Fit right now... and I have been out of the Army for over 15 years.

I had the unshakable belief that my camero could go just about any place anyone with a truck could go. Completely foolish in hindsight, but I did get about everywhere it the woods I wanted to go to. Not like I was trail blazing or mudding I had been stuck numerous times (both with my wife and by myself) when I was going from A to B and a having a pass get closed off or roads become impassable. Those kinds of white out conditions I just hunkered down on the road and waited for the plows or trucks to come through.

While you can stay warm in a car (as long as you can keep the tail pipe clear and you have plenty of gas), it is basically a metal box. Whatever it is like outside, is going to be magnified inside the car (except wind and water). I would rather build a temporary shelter nearby and slowly improve my position than just wait it out in a car. While you do burn more calories "working" it also keeps you mind occupied. This is doubly important if you are "in charge" of others. Giving them a task (even if it is just gather tinder) is better than just sitting idle (weather permitting). You have to win at the mental game of survival if you even plan to play the physical game. Losing the will = losing your life.

[bernardwinston]

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I wish if I could have the great stories I would like to share nit to you guys.