I will share a couple of extra thoughts abpout this ... navigation.

The MAIN thing - if you have a kid in the wilderness, and your child is one of these "adventurous" personalities - it might pay to attach a PLB directly to your child. It would save a lot of heartache ... if the child becomes lost later.

About navigation. The story of the lost boy finding the forest road, and turning in the wrong direction, reminded me of a Lesson Learned (a long time ago). I used to do outdoors navigation exercises. Just walking with a compass, taking sighting and bearings. Basically the same as Orienteering. I used to do it alone in the desert. In that stretch of desert, there were many bushes, with the tops above head level. It was EXTREMELY easy to lose your direction, and pretty easy to lose your car (to my chagrin).

My first exercise ... do a simple triangle pattern. Each leg about 800 yards long. Try to return to your exact starting point. BAD IDEA ... I reached my Starting Point. I had a small error (easy to make with a compass). And I could not find my vehicle. It was completely lost amongst the bushes. DUH!! The moral of that story - do not return to a specific point on a map, unless it's a really visible landmark.

My "improvement" ... when I did the return leg, I intercepted a dirt road. This was much better, because you are guaranteed of crossing that road. BUT the problem with this idea ... when you hit the road ... do you go to the LEFT or the RIGHT. Hahahaha! MORE time wasted!! :-)

FINALLY, I got smarter and realized - when you do a navigational exercise, DELIBERATELY MISS you target (the final ending point). I changed the compass reading so I KNEW that when I intercepted the dirt road, I needed to walk to the right down the road. Problem solved.

The little boy in this story was alive when he found the Forest Road. Tragically, he walked the wrong way on the road. But there was no way that he could have known the answer.

Pete