The sad reality is that no one expects the worst to happen to them, however statistics show a completely different picture. This custom Google News Alert I use, auto emails me every day, news article links on the multitudes of injuries and deaths that occur in the great pursuit of the outdoors culture. There is much sobering reading there and I often use some as an example when we are out with others who may not think that they need to be prepared.

This is what I refer to as "Short Hike Syndrome". Too many people go out for what was to be a short hike then end up in survival situations that they never expected. Too often though, the end result is not pleasant...

I like the ideas of this post. A little play along can be very eye-opening.

Unfortunately, even when something does go wrong, some people will see not see the light.They'll think of it as a fluke, or the result of some stupidity of bad luck that could never happen to them. Be prepared for that.

You can't teach motivation. A student must find it on their own. Today, there is no excuse to be unmotivated about survival after the teacher lays out the reasons and while there is access to Google. If an unmotivated person is coming on a trip with me, I'll make a mental note of the weak link and plan accordingly. I'll try not to waste energy by arguing with the person or by putting the person down.

Even prepared people forget stuff. I would start with don't sweat the small stuff, meaning the 10 essentials is pretty much acknowledged as, "You are a HUGE idiot for not carrying this on you". You're saying this person is somewhat of an outdoorsman, so by reminding them they have a decent history of adventure their experience is wide but shallow, attack their level of preparedness compared to their level of experience.

Sarcasm I think would work well here. "Wow, you got a lot of experience, too bad if you get into trouble and have less prepared people with you, you're all gonna die b/c you let your ego control your gear." "Gee nice to know, you've learned nothing about being prepared while spending so much time outdoors. how do you start a fire w/o a bic?" and on and on and on.

It is hard to make people aware of the danger of being stranded in the wilderness because most people believe that it will never happen to them. Many also underrate how much there is to learn in these subjects areas. I cannot count how many people I have come across who carried compasses, but realty did not understand how to use them to travel. We are fighting complacency, a real lack of understanding of the subject matter, and a poor outdoor education system.

It is also very hard because as a society (actually two societies; USA & Canada) we underrate the teaching of wilderness training, survival training, and the need for wilderness navigation training. As a profession teaching these subjects pays quite poorly and are often ignored in curriculum development in our schools. Since there is no real system of standards and you learned very little about it in schools; maybe its not really important. TV seems to make to look easy or so dangerous that its is not worth trying.


It is a hard task to make someone aware of the chances and dangers of getting stranded in the wilderness. Everytime you travel into the wilderness however well prepared you are there is a chance of being stranded. It will happen eventually. When in doubt read Trina Jackson's Article and see how she fared when both trained and reasonably prepared.

Over the last 18 years of teaching wilderness survival and navigation my best students have always been the ones who have already been lost once. My best classes are ones that had one of these students in them, to pass on their real world experiences one on one to the other students.

I must be missing something. I just do not understand how a compass is so difficult to use.

No one taught me how. Someone did have to teach me the four directions (Never Eat Sour Watermelons), but once I learned that, the rest was easy to figure out.

Sometimes I don't even need a compass. Assuming the sun is visible and not high noon.

Jeanette Isabelle

I think compass work is simple in concept but takes a bit of learning and practice to become a useful navigation tool.

Since I was a kid in Scouts I could probably set and follow a bearing, like in a simple orienteering course (go 100 paces @ 220 degrees). But it wasn't until this year that actually understood enough to use a compass in conjunction with a map for actual backcountry navigation. To learn this, I worked my way through the Mountaineers' Wilderness Navigation book.

I just got back from a backpacking trip and it was a very rewarding experience to be able to use the compass and map to figure out exactly where we were when we were unsure of our location (we thought we were further along the trail than we actually were and I was getting concerned we'd missed a fork in the trail and were heading in the wrong direction).

While I am definitely still a beginner, I know I wouldn't have been able to do that had I not put the effort into doing that book work first.

Its not difficult to use, the trouble lies with the confusion that Mag North (the direction the compass needle points to, which itself moves in relation to the other Grid and True Geodetic Norths), Map Grid North (depends on the local map datum variation to the True Geodectic North) and True Geodetic North (which itself moves slightly due to the earth precession as it spins through space) all point in slightly different directions depending on where you are on the planet. (you can also have extremely large variations the nearer you get to 82.7°N 114.4°W in the Northern Hemisphere)

It's really all about taking actions to minimise and stop the build up of errors to stop folks heading over a cliff.

BTW you would be surprised how many folks don't know how many degrees or milliradians (derived angular military Mils) are in a complete circle. Some even use Grads for Navigation but these compasses are a little more difficult to find.

The US army manual I read back in the mid 1980s didn't know the difference between the different North's either, which was quite a shock because that made a 13-14 year old British Army Cadet a superior navigator than the majority of the folks in the US army at the time.