If they had STOPPED when they realized they were lost, they could have:

* Built a fire to boil water, and they would have had time to let it cool down and then boil more until they and all their water containers were full.

* Enlarged the fire and make it smoky as a marker signal.

* Reduced the cost of the search. If they had to pay for it, this would probably have been a consideration, wouldn't it?

But since it didn't occur to them to STOP, they didn't have time to boil water or create a signal fire.

NO TEA??? How awful! I couldn't do that. Just imagine how many lives have probably been saved simply because one person in the group simply insisted that they stop to build a fire and make tea before blundering onward in the wrong direction.

Sue

Three words we drive into the brains of our Scout from the time they are 5 years old:

Hug A Tree!

When you think you're lost, STOP!

I not not disagree about GPS error. Given the right circumstances and lack of knowledge a GPS can certainly lead you astray. GPS error is one of the many errors (map error, datum error, compass sighting error, etc) we are confronted with in wilderness navigation.

But they did not have a GPS and I think of a GPS as simply part of a good wilderness navigators toolbelt. In my opinion it could have been helpful to tell them that they were at least going away from there trailhead, not getting closer. In fact they were in the "Wrong Province" (state) and heading on a water course towards the pacific ocean, not towards the prairies.

Navigational panic, like any other form of stress induced panic can set-in, hopefully in a survival situation you will recover enough to recheck your tools and look at where you may have made mistakes and correct those errors.

Absolutely, STOP would have got them rescued at least two days earlier.

A few posts have suggested that the women were reading their compass incorrectly. After reading the original article again and looking at some maps, that might not actually be the case.

Unfortunately the language in that article is imprecise, it states:

The women thought they were hiking back toward Upper Kananaskis Lake - but they had become turned around and were headed in the opposite direction, into B.C.

If they were where I think they were, they were basically hiking around a few peaks; heading into BC through the North Kananaskis Pass and heading back into Alberta through the South Kananaskis Pass. Roughly speaking this would require them to head SW and then at one point switch to a SE bearing.

If they missed the point where they needed to change their bearing they could have been "headed in the opposite direction, into B.C." as the article states while still being on a correct bearing, technically speaking (e.g., still heading SW, knowing they were headed SW). The error then would have been determining their actual position on the map as opposed to being an issue with their compass skills. I don't know if this was the case, but it seems like a reasonable possibility.

My map of the area says: "The trail from North Kananaskis Pass to Palliser River and north to Palliser Pass is overgrown, but passable. (not for the inexperienced)"

Interestingly, my trail book (highly regarded, but one edition old) shows a route between these passes on the BC side which is not shown on my (more up to date) topo / trail map. Trail 100 in this diagram is the one I am thinking of (this is from the trail book, not the map, obviously):



Interestingly the difference between my topo and the book is the section of trail between LeRoy Creek and Beatty Lake.

Based on the description from the article, it also sounds like this is the general area where the women were found (it said they were "by the Palliser River near Beatty Creek").

Regarding the dehydration, this is described as a fairly strenuous hike and we have been having weather as hot as it gets up this way, for what that's worth.

Denis, hot weather, is, what, like 20 celcius?
I kid, I kid.

water wise, I count 6 lakes, a river and 2 creeks on that map. Don't know the scale, but since it's a loop, I'd assume it's a fairly large scale map. Still, those lakes didn't get there by magic.

Again, haven't looked at the article, but someone pointed out that electronics could have saved the day. So could have knowing your limitations and not going out in the first place.

Glockaroo, you mention supposedly well informed people not being able to tell the difference in GPS systems. Include me in them. I've never even touched a GPS machine.

Absolutely, we've seen high twenties ... even got into the low thirties a couple times! That's hot for here


For scale, my book lists trail 100 as 10.5 km. I haven't been there, so I don't know for sure how easy the water access is, but I'd lean towards them being dehydrated simply because they didn't drink enough as opposed to not having access to water. That's just a guess though.

As an aside, I took to heart Chris Townsend's caution in The Backpacker's Handbook about treating water. His caution was that insisting that you treat all your water, while not making sure you drink enough water, was worse than simply drinking untreated water to start with. This was based on his experience running into people who wouldn't drink untreated water, but wouldn't filter enough to meet their body's needs (possibly due to effort?).

Aye, but that's the rub. The people I mentioned rely on GPS frequently but aren't informed very well about it. You have no culpability since you don't use the technology.

Touche.

But I'm sure someone's going to ask for my ETS-card for not playing with a GPS

First a quick story:
Long before GPS sats entered orbit (dark ages) I was in Naval flight training and one part of the syllabus had us flying low-level navigation flights in Utah/Nevada.

The route for that day was rather simple; the first leg headed west iirc and all you had to do was count ridge-lines before turning south down a valley for the bulk of the flight. Lots of stuff to see to stay on track and on time. Rather than counting ridge-lines, one of the other students used his stop-watch and turned on time -- he turned down the wrong valley and although he thought he was seeing his checkpoints go by, everything after that first turn was simply wrong. That's the point.

and now back to our hikers:

These three turned down the wrong water-shed (valley) and after that everything was wrong, but from the ground it probably looked like it was supposed to look. They were lost and had no clue.

The $million$ spent on a GPS satellite constellation, the least we can do is spend $100 or so on a GPS receiver so we can access the input. You do not need to buy the latest; the old Garmin Geko 301 I have attached to my mountain bike still works great and that one on eBay is only ~$25 as I type. No maps, but cheap, small and after you add your waypoints, it will tell you how close and what direction -- a simple and cheap investment.

If you have no idea how to use a map and compass, it might be wise to get an understanding of basic navigation principles because even a good GPS cannot fix total ignorance.