Wow, I missed this story when it came out.

Whatever the outcome, I think the scoutmasters made one critical mistake that turned the whole thing from an enjoyable hike into a potential survival situation: They deviated from their plans.

While my motto for the unexpected comes from Clint Eastwood - "Improvise, adapt, overcome," I also have a very Russian philosphy for most situations that I got from Fred Dalton Thompson - "Your average Ruskie, son, doesn't take a dump without a plan."

These adults ran into Stranger-Dangers who told them that the trail ahead "fizzled out." But instead of sticking to their original plan, or better, retracing their steps back along the path they had already traversed, they decided to head off in an unknown, unplanned direction, seeking something that was marked on their map. If the trail ahead becomes impassable or unfollowable, then take the trail behind, but either way, you stick to the freakin' trail! Leaving the trail is the simplest, quickest, easiest, and most foolproof method of getting lost.

If it were just the adults, and they were looking for a little of the unexpected, which can be good as well as bad, then I'd say, "Well, that's the risk you take when you go exploring." But these guys had a groups of minor children in their charge, and had no business going anywhere or doing anything that wasn't in the original plan (or their backup plan, if they had one), without a major compelling reason. And I don't consider a couple of strangers telling you that the trail ahead "fizzles out" to be a compelling enough reason to deviate from the plans.

Had they stuck to the original trail, or reversed direction and retraced their inbound trail, they might have been late, might have spent an extra night in the wild before getting home, but they probably would not have gotten lost.

They did make another, minor mistake in hiking on after dark. My own childhood camping experience taught me the hard way that A) setting up any kind of camp in the dark is difficult at best, and maybe even dangerous, and B) hiking through the woods after dark is at the very least dangerous, if not foolhardy.

I have a little scar on my shin to this day that I got when I was about 12 from walking through the woods in the dark; I stepped in a hole I couldn't see, fell forward onto a rock, and lost a chunk of flesh on a sharp edge. Fortunately, it didn't crack the bone or require stitches, but it did require butterfly closures and was pretty painful. Moonlight isn't particularly helpful when you're in the woods in the middle of summer - the leaves have a tendancy to screen out full daytime sunlight, let alone moonlight.

Then there's gathering wood and building a fire by flashlight; it's not easy, or particularly safe, considering the types of critters that can be found under logs and branches at night in North Carolina. Setting up tents by firelight and flashlight is also not easy, especially the part where you swing a heavy blunt instrument to drive tent pegs into the ground.

So while these guys do seem to have made some smart decisions, they also made some potentially fatal bad decisions, either out of carelessness or a misplaced sense of adventure-seeking. This was a Boy Scout camping trip, not the USMC Crucible - they were out there for some safe fun, not for a real-world test of their survival skills.

The very best way out of a survival situation is to not get into it in the first place. Sometimes it's unavoidable no matter what you do, but in this case it was completely avoidable.