A similar thing happened to me about 30 years ago.

Three friends and I set out in a Ford Maverick to find a Christmas tree near our home town in Southern Ontario. We went to a large wooded valley and left the car on top of the hill because with a foot of snow on the ground it would never make it out of the valley. The area was dense conifer with firebreaks cut through it and we started walking without paying any real attention. I remember we had winter clothing on (boots, coats, hats, mitts) but probabaly only jackknives and maybe a lighter as survival equipment, plus a small hatchet to cutdown the tree. We got so far down the valley that we decided to walk out to the highway instead of backtracking through the snow, that is when we got lost. After a couple hours we found an old road which lead to a Scout Camp that we had been to a couple of years before. From there we walked out to the highway then the long walk around the valley on the county roads back to the car, we arrived just at dark, and still did not have a Christmas tree.

In the dark we went to another area to to look for a tree, we were now a lot less picky. We found a nice tree at the edge of a river and my partner started to cut it down with the hatchet. On the third strike the head came off the hatchet and fell into the river! I can still picture my buddy laying on the snowy riverbank with his bare arm in the water to retreive the hatchet head. We got the head back and because it was very dull it took a long time to chop through the 4 inch spruce tree.

This was one of those teenage adventures that you learn from, but how your children have the sense to avoid.

Mike