I saw a tip on a survival video once that I haven't seen in any survival texts. If you're crossing a frozen creek or river that could possibly be flowing under the ice, carry (by it's center) a long stick or branch , maybe 3 meters long, so that if you fall through the ice, you will not be swept under the ice by the current. Given that following creeks is a popular "walk-out" technique, a frozen crossing or two could be a definate possibility in rugged terrain.
ps- A friend and I were once lost in 1200 foot deep canyons. We were tired after backpacking for a few days, and my friend convinced me to take a "shortcut", because we were following a trail that by following hikable terrain looped way around a semi-circle. The hand-drawn map we were using was not to scale, which I tried to explain, but he was insistent on "cutting straight across", and I love adventure, so......we get lost bigtime and after several miles, never acquire the trail on the other side. Why didn't we backtrack? I guess you had to be there. We hadn't left a trail of breadcrumbs behind, and the hope of finding the trail and being that much closer to home was overpowering. With the map not being to scale, we just kept going. I hadn't planned this off-trail "time and energy saving shortcut", so I didn't take any topographical maps on this trip. We knew that we could pick up a known trail on top of the ridge, so we hiked along the bottom of the entire length of a 50 meter high cliff wall and never found a route to the ridgetop. After scrambling through the damage path of a previous tornado (thank goodness for internal frame packs), and many thickets of nearly impassable thorny bramble and 90F humid conditions, we made it to a creek. The road we were parked on followed a river that ran north/south to the east of our position, so I guessed that if we followed this creek eastward, it could take us eventually to the river and our car. So we followed this creek for a few miles, until we came to a huge boulder in the middle of the creek. It appeared that the creek flowed underneath the boulder. Upon checking the other side, there was no creek! That's right, the creek ran down into a hole about 2 meters wide, under the boulder, and dissapeared into the water table or cave. Great! There goes that strategy. My friend decided it was time to start shouting "HELP!!!" I decided it was almost time to strangle him. <img src="images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> I'm sure he was regretting not following the easy path, and I was getting more adventure than I bargained for. So I find a clearing and look around, and the topography swept uphill in all directions. We were in a huge bowl, or cirque, surrounded by high ground and cliff walls. We picked the lowest elevation on the horizon, a "saddle" or "pass", and made it across. We then tracked downhill until we hit another creek. Same plan, different time of day. This creek also ran generally eastward. Miles later this creek led us to a bridge, where our road crossed our creek as it made it's way into the river. We were familiar with this road, so we knew which direction to walk on it. Our car was only a 1/4 mile away. Hallelujah.
If possible, always have a known baseline (?) in your area of travel; a road, river, powerlines, ridgeline, etc, and a general idea of the compass heading of this feature.
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