"...real-life scenarios often cannot be prepared for or mimicked. "

"...urban dwellers in particular may have a more difficult time tuning into their surroundings when they become lost in the wild. Urbanites who've grown accustomed to the ease of GPS navigation, for example, could have a harder time determining north from south."

"Laurence Gonzales ... blames our culture of abundance for maintaining our 'vacation state of mind'..."

"Keech questions how much responsibility authorities should carry 'when people choose to travel into remote, unpopulated and unknown terrain—especially in harsh weather conditions?'
...'(and) '...there is not yet any foolproof remedy for human error and a lack of luck.' "

From "What Makes Someone a Survivor?"
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/2009/May/What-Makes-Someone-a-Survivor---.html

Susan:

In your post you stated “‘...there is not yet any foolproof remedy for human error and a lack of luck.'" I feel compelled to respond that in my opinion there is a remedy,, regrettably that remedy is death.

Please accept my apology if I offend, but if the urban dweller goes into a part of the world they know they shouldn't be in, during adverse conditions, I personally say that is when the Darwin factor kicks in. We humans have services and people that directly block that "thinning" from happening by rushing out in the middle of the night, in a snow storm, to rescue the people who should have known better. Children, on the other hand, just don't know better. Children should be sought after and don't necessarily know when things are in over there head or when things have gone from "fun" to "life threatening"

I should add that I am one of those that rush out to help. Having done SAR in Alaska, Maine and Rescue in Mass, I was and will always bee one of those willing to help those that just don't think things through.

Taking advantage of technology is great as long as there is a genuine benefit and you don't grow critically dependent on it. IMO that's all that needs to be said there and it's really self-explanatory.

What Tyber just pointed out is equally true but on a somewhat different level. These days, a lot of people don't seem to be ready to take any kind of responsibility for what they do. It's also fair to say that many trust technology way too much, hoping some gadget they bought will reliably keep them out of harms way.

Every individual has a different set of skills and abilities that determines just how far they can push themselves and still stay reasonably safe. Just like a responsible individual would not wander around a crime-infested neighborhood late at night so it goes without saying that a good many city dwellers have no business going into the wilderness alone.

Of course, everybody loves adventure so people often bite off more than they can chew. But that's not what SAR really is about. It's there to save people who went out and despite good preparation ran into serious trouble. The problem is, today SAR is often abused by folks who hit the great outdoors totally unprepared in every sense of the word and expect to be rescued by the push of a button the moment they do anything dumb. Technology is partly to blame as well, especially with devices like SPOT that are basically marketed as a method for quick, easy pushbutton rescue.

Anything that relies on a power source is not entirely reliable so tech falls to the bottom of that list. And in a crisis I would not want to rely on anything that comes with an 80-page manual.

Knowledge and mental toughness (attitude + determination) are the most important, I believe.

Luck is nice but inherently unpredictable and elusive (for instance, those in peril weren't lucky enough to not be in peril, to begin with).

The Gonzalez book was fascinating. I was especially struck by his observation that young children have survived situations adults haven't because young kids are more likely to heed their instinct to hunker down and stay in one place, helping rescuers to find them. They don't overthink.

But some kids have had fear of strangers so drilled into them, they've hidden from rescuers. And older kids may not do as well in a survival situation because they've already begun to overthink (i.e. getting more lost while trying to get un-lost).

I agree with Tyber. The first thing that popped into my head as to remedy was death. We can tend to be Lemmings sometimes, but eventually the crowd gets wise to the notion that those who walk toward the big dark hole don't come back and are never heard from again.

Batteries, dynamos and solar cells are a convenient alternative, but I also agree that it is unwise to rely on anything that requires electricity to run. For that reason I have resisted buying any of the LCD type compasses, and keep at least three light sources with me at all times.

The more you know of how to utilize items commonly found to accomplish the necessary tasks that get you by, the better your chances. Of course, it is still handy to be lucky, but not something you should ever plan for.

At the risk of going political yet again, SAR services get abused far too much. Considering it was all but non-existent a hundred years ago, I believe too many people nowadays either simply don't have a friggin' clue what they are getting themselves into, or consider SAR a safety net and don't prepare adequately for the risks.

Yes, the notion that salvation is just a 911 call away is a dangerous one.

And more dangerous the further out people go into the wilderness.

Isn't the urban environment more dangerous?

Surely you are much more likely to get shot or stabbed, die in an auto accident, fall out of a window, fall down the stairs, slip of your roof trying to get a good digital TV signal, get electrocuted, drown in a swimming pool, get run over by a bus, crash into the ground in an airliner, die at the hands of a middle eastern Terrorist, die in a house fire, have a heart attack in a McDs, KFC, BK, get a deadly communicable disease etc, than get attacked by a big grizzly bear out in the multimedia badlands of the untamed scary scary Wilderness.

Though saying that some of the townies don't even realise it gets dark out in the wilderness and aren't used to the peace and quiet, which kinda freaks them out.

But if a townie has to spend more than a few days out in the woods because they got lost they suddenly become a news media 'survivor'.

Long gone are the days when anyone could just head off into the hills for the day with just some cheese sandwiches, a flask of tea and a map and compass without being accused of not being prepared like Tom Weir in his 1970s TV series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MZX3EMICP8&feature=related

Great Stuff all the TV shows can be viewed here ;

Ah the nostalgia

I joke that I "straddle the fence." I am a techno geek, (my job in heavly in the Virtual Server IT world) but I still can light a fire with two sticks and a bit of twine. I use technology, but I don't trust it.. Bateries die, chips fry and well if you don't have the skills, you die. (humm coinable frase there)

SAR is often used as the "easy out" Having done SAR in Alaska and had to go after my fair share of Goat hunters that scrambled down a clif or a ledge and not thought, "how do I get out of this" does get anoying.


IN ressponce to Am_Fear's posting, I would say that the old days of going out to the wilderness for a day hike with a ham sandwich went away as the average persons time in the woods on a regular basis went away.

When I was a kid we would go into the back 100 acers and have a snack play paint ball or whatever.. but we also spent tons of time in the woods, hiking, camping, getting lost,, finding road you never knew were there, and hiking home. More than once did I have what I called "discovery trips." Now-a-days people don't go into the woods, they look at them online, through there car windows, or in post cards (do people send them anymore?) But they don't go in, get there shoes dirty and walk around in the woods.

Some how the woods went from inviting fun place to be, to the dark scarry place.

Me personaly, I will stick with traveling both sides of the fence, learning and honing my outdoor skills, and still working the ways of the digital age. I carry GPS, analog watch and compass, with the knowledge to use all three.

When I was in high school the three foriegn languages available were french,german and spanish.
The CURRICULUM stated french was the language of culture, german science and spanish for our nieghbors to the south.

Many of my classmates found themselves one year from graduation in Vietnam trying not to become bui dai. Some of those guys now speak fluent vietnamese, which is incredibly usefull at convenience stores in Little Saigon today.

Society dictates the curriculum of survival, be it wearing a suit to an interview, avoiding eye contact in 'bad nieghborhoods'
or telling park visitors to camp only in areas known by bears to be convenient food resources.

Members of that society who 'screw up' in wilderness are suddenly
responsible for their own well being in a society that regulates behaviour for job interviews, driving in bad nieghborhoods and camping.

Society has failed, not the individual. And when Boy Scouts only make the news over civil rights issues, people carrying pocket knives are deemed dangerous and 3 helicopters hover overhead for 4 hours watching a black bear running through a California nieghborhood something isn't right.

We are a SOCIAL animal. We admire the 'rugged individual' the successfull maverik entrepenuer, the avant guard artist. We just don't let our daughters bear their children.

I carry my gps on any trip we take and my wife asks me all the time why I look at it when we know where we are, but I check it every so often for reference, just to make sure its still right and I'm right as to which direction we are facing and so I know where we were the last time I looked should something fail so I can find ourselves easily on the paper maps.
Are there any places where you actually can get so far out that you can't get 911 anymore? Maybe a few places out west but here on east of the USA there isn't that much land anymore. I drove up past the state park camp area today and on one side of the road was camp sites the other side 300k houses, that doesn't seem much like camping to me. I want to take my kids outdoors but I want to find places that are remote as my idea of camping isn't seeing big houses across the road, or people getting drunk in the camp site next to you or coughing on the cigar smoke from the person "camping" on the other side of you. I'm not finding many places that are actaully out there. Even the state forests are mixed among farm land so you have to have your gos and map to e sure as to not trespass on the farmers land and even still you have to be in designated camp sites.

"Are there any places where you actually can get so far out that you can't get 911 anymore?"

Absolutely! While the eastern U.S. doesn't have many points over 3,500 ft, the terrain out here varies between 282 ft below sea level to over 20,000 ft, with nearly endless variations in between. If there is a hill or outcrop or mountain between your cell phone and the nearest tower, you are SOL for 911 or anything else. We have wilderness areas that measure in the millions of acres. You just don't have to go very far to find yourself out of cell phone range.

Anyway, I posted the original article because many people think their cell phone, GPS and PLBs will solve all their wilderness problems, and they won't.

Sue

I should have worded that better, I know I can't get cell phone reception at my parents house in the valley but its not really all that far out there and if I just walk up a hill then you do get reception. I want to know are there any real places I can go camping without seeing and hearing someone else, places I have to setup my own camp, not park in a designated parking spot. places we actually can go explore a little bit.

Eugene:

YES!! there are definatly places that you can go and explore..

Hmm, that's not a remedy, that's a result....

The point is that help is more accessible in the city than in the wilderness.

I can't get a cell signal 80 miles outside Washington, D.C. in route to Shenandoah National Park.

In the city, my cell phone works and 911 usually yields a quick result.

I have Verizon cell service and lose the signal about 80 miles west of Washington, D.C. in route to the Shenandoah Mountains. In the Shenandoah, at 3700 feet, cell reception is the exception, not the norm.

That's why I so enjoy camping out there. Cell service has certainly improved over the years but it is my no means everywhere. Not by a long shot.

When you are stripped of all your tools, all you have is your ability to adapt. Depending on anything other than yourself is putting you in harms way. Unfortunately, our society makes us dependent people-dependent on others, on gadgets, on almost everything. Case in point; I had to go survey a field yesterday for a parade this weekend. I sat down & drew a rough sketch of the field, where everything was laid out, etc. I put a North arrow pointing roughly in the northern direction. The two people with me we completely amazed I knew where north was "instinctively". I merely pointed out to them that the sun sets it the west...I sorta figured it out from there (it was almost 7PM at this point). Point of the story is, people are so reliant on everything else to get their information, they tune themselves out. Then, when the chips are down, they have no one to rely upon but themselves-and, sadly, at that point, no experience to draw upon.

that's funny, cause finding north without gear wasn't even on the list of stuff i thought would get commented on while i was reading that.

What burns my butt is this talk of luck.

An experienced backpacker goes into the woods for the weekend. He falls and breaks a leg in east no-place. Because he is experienced, he has the gear and the knowledge to survive this accident.

No luck involved. He sat down and made a plan and knew what to do if something like this happened. More importantly, he told other people what to do if he didn't show up by a certain time.

Everything is a matter of being prepared for the environment you are placing yourself in. Should you choose to live in a city, you learn the rules of the city. You know how to hail a cab, take a subway, where not to go. If you decide to leave the city without the requisite knowledge to survive outside your "comfort zone"... failure to plan.

Planning is an important part of any venture. Be it a trip to the 7-11 to get a quart of milk... better take my wallet, car keys, not too much money... or be it a trip to Alaska for a month... the same rules apply. Know your environment and the rules to survive in it.

Amen brother.

Sort of like the old Arnold Palmer quote - "The more I practice, the luckier I get."

Practice means thinking about it before, during and after to see if there are better or alternative ways to cope.

My favorite winter hiking area has no cell service and essentially no visitors.
That's why I leave a hike plan and timetable with my wife. And why I carry about 25# of Just In Case on my back.

Let me express this mathematically.

T + K + A + D + L = 98.6 +/- 1, where each of the five variables represent the five parameters outlined in the title of the post, and result is normal body temperature, give or take.

You can raise and lower them to a certain degree, but you can only go so far or the entire thing fails to work.

Luck, fate, chance, destiny, probability, call it what you will; some things are just beyond our power to influence, and a small but significant subset of these are also beyond over power to meaningfully mitigate, regardless of our knowledge, abilities, preparation or equipment. The universe does have a sense of humor, and abhors hubris.

An important part of the "wilderness experience" that many seek is precisely the challenge of the unfamiliar, the discomforting, and the not entirely safe. Wilderness merely reminds us what it is like not to be able to rely on the trappings of civilization. But we are, to some degree, kidding ourselves if we think we are, or ever can be, entirely "self-reliant." Nature, in the form of chance, always plays a part, and the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.

So, anybody may find himself overtaken by events and in want of a rescue (just ask Bear). I have to question, however, the widely held notion that neophytes disproportionately tend to get themselves into trouble because, in their mental calculations of risk, they have an expectation of readily available rescue. Or, stated in the reverse, they do things they otherwise would not if they knew that there was minimal possibility of rescue.

I'm just having trouble picturing that internal monologue. "Gee, this could be dangerous, too dangerous for someone like me. But I've got my cellphone, and I can always call for help if I need it, so I'll just go ahead and risk it." It seems far more likely that no such consideration ever occurs. The neophyte's error is not undue reliance on rescue, it is obliviousness of risk. A sunny morning, an inviting, seemingly well-marked trail leading off from the campground, and the thought of a pleasant stroll in the woods are the only things likely to be in the neophyte's mind.

Any thought of rescue just doesn't enter into it. Only later, when they are "lost," maybe wet, cold or tired, it's getting dark, and the woods don't seem so friendly anymore, does the first thought of rescue occur to them.

Fortunately, these are usually the easiest type of rescue, often little more than a hasty front-country search or an easy hoist back up to the overlook parking lot. But takes an "expert" to really screw things up. More complex, larger-scale back-country searches and many technical type rescues are for more experienced, presumably better trained and equipped "expert" outdoorsmen and women plucked from cliff faces and out of river gorges or the like.

Luck is always a variable. A minor one, to be sure, but it represents the possibility of a random event that can have a radical change in events. There are things that you can't plan for- you can make plans that will adapt and help mitigate them, but sometimes Murphy happens.

Theoretical case:

You've set up camp, and will be there for another five days. Your overdue is the evening after your trip is to end. You get stung by a bee while going to your cat hole 100m from your camp, where you left your gear. This is a new experience for you, quite novel, it has never happened before. And you didn't know you are quite allergic to bee stings. Your gear means doesn't mean much right now. Neither does your skill. And your plan for calling out the cavalry... yeah, meaningless right now.

There is a chance you'll survive. There is a chance you won't. Luck, pure and simple random chance. This is an extreme theoretical, but I can't imagine that it hasn't happened. I've never been stung by a bee, and I've accidentally stepped on them, sat on one, swatted at them with my hand, even found a hive in the wall of an old out building I was helping to tear down. I could get stung tomorrow, and keel over and turn blue five minutes later. Or I might not, don't know. *shrugs*

Luck.

that's the spirit.

Luck may have another name for some people -- it's like a random number generator. Planning is all very fine and I recommend it highly, but planning doesn't cover everything. Bee sting, rock slide, one rock rolling under your foot, gopher hole, simple mistake, pilot forgets to drain condensation out of gas tank, weather change, trying to go another hundred yards can all change the equation, as can a million other things. Planning often puts you in a better position, but it doesn't nullify luck, chance, kismet or whatever else you call it.

It is ludicrous to think that you can plan for everything.

But luck is often what people depend on, and that's even crazier.


"The neophyte's error is not undue reliance on rescue, it is obliviousness of risk."

Sometimes that is true, but I think today's assumption of entitlement is also a big factor. I have actually heard people at a trailhead discussing their lack of an area map, and one of them shrugged and said that SAR could come out and find them. They weren't more than six feet from the car at the time, so please don't assume that it isn't actually considered.

Fools come with and without gear. Fools come with and without experience. Attitudes of It-won't-happen-to-me, I-can-get-back-before-dark, I-can-travel-faster-with-less-gear, etc, are all the mantra of people who lack common sense. Someone once said that television has indoctrinated many people with the sense that all problems are solved within sixty minutes (less commercial time), and that may be a factor, too.

Lack of judgment kills a lot of people, and luck is what saves others. Fate's random number generator. Or a crap shoot.

Sue

Well, thank God for fools. Without them, I might not have a job!

Luck is like the wind to a sailor,

You can make use of the wind,
But you can NEVER depend or trust the wind!!

Amen! And yet, I often find myself wishing they weren't quite so foolish. Whether it is a computer program or a map and compass, I am amazed how poorly people prepare themselves with the tools they need in life. But they can show you all the features on their new iPhone.

There are many "Iphone" types like you mention that head out with little more than a smile, even when seeing things like this:



I was a volunteer years ago trying to hunt them down out there and bring them back on the Presidential Range. They didn't have Iphone's then, they didn't have much of anything. While some of them get into trouble with an injury, most were just people who went into something beyond their ability and experience. It's a huge adreneline rush when you find someone and it's a rescue, not so much when it turns to recovery. A very high percentage were situations that would have been avoided with proper preparation, only a very small handfull ever turned out to be incidents that happened when there had been proper training, equipment, and preparation.

I always joke that you should procede and pack and train as if Murphy's law was a constant.

Anything that can go wrong, will.

Expect the worse and hope for the best. (not sure if that is Murphy)


Many people ribb me about what is on my belt, many people joke about the box in the back of my truck, the bag I bring with me. Intrestingly enough it is the people that ask me if I have a knife to cut something, a band-aid to cover there cut, rope to tie the gear down, ect..

It is those "I-phone" types that mock me,, then need me..

Interesting article... While it's true you can't prepare for EVERYTHING, you can still be aware of problems that you may encounter and get your self ready appropriately. There's always going to be something you're not ready for but expect the best and prepare for the worst.