Hiking Around in Circles? Probably, Study Says

[fgoodwin]

Hiking Around in Circles? Probably, Study Says

 

 

 

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Published: August 20, 2009

 

With countless thousands of Americans hitting the hiking trails this month for one last summer adventure, it is a sure bet that some of them will get lost along the way. Those fortunate enough to make it back may be convinced that they spent hours walking in circles.

 

Scientists in Germany reported Thursday that this often-described sense of lost-hiker dj vu, of having inadvertently backtracked while wandering in the woods, is real. People really do walk in circles, said Jan L. Souman of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tbingen.

 

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, do not surprise many back-country guides, rescuers and other hiking experts, who say that to avoid walking in circles or otherwise getting lost, hikers should rely on a simple compass, or a more complicated device like a GPS unit, rather than themselves.

 

Just about everybody who has spent considerable time in the woods has probably experienced being lost and feeling as if they have become turned around, said Carroll M. Ware, a licensed guide in Maine. If theyll admit it, he added.

 

Mr. Ware and others said there was a sure way to avoid such an outcome by heeding the one critical piece of advice for hikers who are hopelessly disoriented.

 

Your job as the lost person is to sit down, he said. By moving you make everybodys job more difficult.

 

[excerpted]

[BMinsker]

My son picked up a t-shirt at Bryce Canyon this summer. On the back it says, "Bring a compass. It's awkward when you have to eat your friends."

[raisinemright]

I can attest to that. About 25 years ago, I was kicking around in the woods on a friends property and got myself serioulsy misplaced. At some point, I noticed that I had dropped the lens cap from my camera. I kept on walking and trying to get my bearings. About an hour later, I stopped, looked down, picked up my lens cap and continued on my way.

[Gunny2862]

Thus far, I have never been lost.

 

I found the map had me located in the wrong place once or twice, (Homer Simpson "Stupid map, Doh!") but never lost.

 

Seriously, if you are entering a Wilderness area w/o a map and compass, you either need to have been there many times before and feel intimately familiar with the area or have your head examined.

GPS's are nice but isn't it amazing how the neato gadgets know when you REALLY need them and choose that opportunity to fail? Take a compass.

[JoeBob]

GPS has turned land navigation into an archain mystery.

Until the first electro-magnetic pulse.

Then nobody's GPS will work,and everybody will be lost. At least our cars won't be running into each other. ;^)

 

What happens when China decides to scramble the satelites? I wonder if ships at sea still have sextants onboard?

[Horizon]

JoeBob: Have you read One Second After?

 

http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765317583

 

Our Trails are so well marked in the forests around Southern California (that we have hit so far) that navigation is not seen as that critical, except in determining "Are we there yet?"

 

It is hard to get lost when there is only one trail, and the few crossroads have signs pointing exactly where you are to go.

[eisely]

I certainly would not rely on trail markers. These have been known to be tampered with.

[meschen]

Who isn't familiar with this old quote?

 

I can't say as ever I was lost,

but I was bewildered once for three days.

Daniel Boone

 

[CalicoPenn]

Yep - a compass and map is great - if you bother to use it. Most people bring it with them into the woods and don't think about using it until the get lost - by then it's too late, unless you're using it to keep yourself moving in a straight line.

 

GPS is a toy - It's great if you have a sat phone and get lost - you can call someone up and give them the coordinates of where the GPS says you are - just don't panic when you hear someone 1,500 yards away looking for you and not being able to find you right away. It's also great if you have a route mapped out with GPS coordinates (Backpacker Magazine publishes such waypoint finding routes every month).

 

The vast majority of people's wilderness experience is on marked or blazed trails. Even the wilderness trail systems in our national parks and forests are trail systems - you may need a backcountry permit but you still follow a pre-existing trail.

 

What's missing is woods sense. When people get turned around, they tend to start panicking, then forget even rudimentary "rules" let alone tidbits they may have picked up but never thought they'd have to use. How many people think about following an obvious game trail if lost knowing the liklihood is that it will lead to a water source - a lake that might serve as a landmark, or a stream that can be followed and serve as an anchor point? Heck, how many people even know this is an option?

 

There was a thread about a Scout who was "rescued" from Mt. Washington. He hurt his ankle and remembering he was near some shorter trails he had hiked before, set out for those trails. In the summer, it's highly likely he would have found those other trails easily. In the spring, it was a bit more difficult. When he was "rescued", he had abandoned trying to climb down the mountain and started heading up the mountain - a wise move because he knew that at the summit of the mountain was human habitation - and a road leading back down. I give that Scout a lot of credit for remembering that, and being calm enough to act on the knowledge he had.

 

Today, in the continental United States, there are very few places where some kind of road in not within a ten mile walk - as long as one can keep on a straight line course, you will find your way to civilization eventually.

 

 

[Gunny2862]

I am happy to say that given a working compass and a map that encloses the location where I am dropped that I could eventually find my way out of just about anywhere with any discernible landmarks.

 

I have lots of weaknesses but Land Nav. isn't one of them.

 

Ask me what kind of tree that is though and I'll probably scratch my head and say, "Wooden?"

[Hal_Crawford]

I like GPS but I would never depend on it as my primary means of finding my way in the woods. I have mapping software at home that I use to mark way points at major trail intersections and the like. Our scouts use map and compass as their primary means of navigation checking the GPS if they think they have missed something.

 

I keep my GPS switched on and tracking while we are on the trail. Afterwards I download the track to my computer and the scouts can see their actual route compared to the planned route. It is a good learning tool.

 

Hal

[eisely]

I don't do circles. Ellipses and other geometric forms perhaps, but not circles.

[SSScout]

Once upon a time, I went camping with some friends. We decided we needed to go someplace new, someplace none of us had ever been before, but that was not too challenging. We figured 6 ,7 miles in, about the same out might be about right. One of us picked up "Guide to Trails in the Otter Creek Wilderness". Well, that was a place we all knew by reputation, but, strangely enough, altho we were all experienced hiker/campers (ex Scouts, AYH tour leaders), had never been to. Decided.

OK, He plans the meals, he picks up the food and supplies, she borrows the tents, he plans the route. I ended up being one of the drivers. So we set out.

Leave one car at the end of the chosen trail, drive everyone to the beginning. Shuttle set up!

Guide is quite specific, names sites along the way, old farmsteads, rock formations, etc. The fellow who had studied the guide, and had previously navigated us to the trailhead and trailend leads off.

Nice trail. Pretty scenery. Pleasent company. Guide says a ruin should be about... here. Where is it? Ummm. Oh, here it is, further on. But we already passed that old orchard. And the quartz outcrop, too far along...

 

Well, it turned out that our "navigator" had us on the right trail, but was reading the directions BACKWARD from our walking direction.

 

A memorable trip, none the less.

[SctDad]

I think that there was once a great explorer that said, I have never been lost. Maybe confused for about three days, but never lost.

 

YOu are right, GPS is only good if you know how it works and how to use it. And you have a map. It does no good knowing your coordinates, if you cannot put that information to use on a map.

[JoeBob]

Living in the Georgia Piedmont, I've become heavily dependant on terrain features for backwoods navigation. If I could only have one, I'd choose a topo map over a compass.

 

Then I visited northern Alberta for a week. The land is very flat, and the forest all looks alike. Cloudy days, when I couldn't rely on the sun, I just stayed on the trails. I've always felt at home in the woods, especially at night; but way up there, way out there, it was a little spooky...

 

I could see me walking in circles.