Most common reason hikers get stuck overnight...?

Answer: Lack of light to hike out. A simple flashlight or headlamp could shorten your stay in the woods by about 8 hours.

Or maybe lack of good judgment?

Sue

We had a guy get lost and have to spend the night at Squaw Peak Park in downtown Phoenix. He didn't bring water on his hike with his family. He went back to the car to get water. He got lost and they found him the next morning. If you walk for little more than an hour in any direction you will walk into someone's yard. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Any direction - as opposed to in circles.

It always drove me nuts that the Blair Witch kids didn't follow the stream. However, they had supernatural spirits messing with their heads.

I don't believe that it was spirits messing with their heads...just the Director of the movie. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I was going to say STUPIDITY and not thinking about the "what if's"...... As a SAR team member, I saw that reason enough.

That is so true. When I lived in Northern California, I was involved with the Marin County Search and Rescue team, we had lost hikers on Mt. Tam all the time. When it starts getting dark and the fog rolls in, you can't see your hand in front of your face, even with a full moon out. People don't realize that when it is 80 degrees out in the afternoon, it will be 40 just after the sun goes down and the fog comes in. Mostly we had mountain bikers, but some lost hikers.

Ready

Susan's is still the most correct answer.

In the Searches I have been involved in these are some of the reasons. In no order.

Misjudgement of travel time.
Just plain Lost
Rapid Change in weather
Medical emergency
Dead
Not really hiking (Dear hunting.....not deer hunting)

Yeah - in fact, I'd say Dear Hunting (or as we sometimes say "Hunting the 2 legged Dear, not the 4") probably leads to more problems than anything else

A friend and I hiked the Morrison trail around Kinzua in PA, we had never hiked the trail before, we got to the trail head at 10:15 am and started hiking at 10:30. We knew it was a long trail 11.4 miles to be exact, what we didn't know was the direction we started in was the easy way and coming out would be all up hill and along steep drop offs and up and down through large rocks. Everything went fine for most of the day, then it started rail lightly and get a little foggy, to top that off it got dark.........lol. Well the Forest service must think that its funny to place the trail markers far apart, during the daylight hours thats ok because you can see the trail, but at night its rather annoying, good thing I had my Streamlight and Larry had is Inova both 3 watt LEDs, we managed to stay on the trail most of the time but there were sections that we had to have one stand and wait while the other walked in the direction we thought the trail went, all the time keeping the other light in sight, only to find out that was the wrong direction and had to come back and try a different one. We did make it out just fine, oh yea we were smart enough to have our GPS's and had marked the location of the trail head before starting the hike. Had we needed to spend the night we had our packs with everything we would need to be warm,dry and comfortable and well fed.
I'm new to the forums and have been reading all the posts,as you can tell by me answering a post form last year.....lol hope someone reads this and can get some use out of it.

lack of sound judgement... I ditto Sue's remark

I have to disagree with you Halcon, my judgement is sound, I was prepared to walk out or spend the night....which is what I thought this sight was all about, being prepared. Maybe I'm wrong and need to rethink things. Someone help me out here, what did I do wrong?

Izzy

Thats a good idea, sorry to say the State Forests here in Pa are open 24/7/365, its the people that don't prepare that worry me, not myself, I have been hiking since I was 8 and I'm now 51 sad to say and I have never had to spend the night or gotten lost.

Shadow, you assumed Halcon was talking to/about you, rather than agreeing with Sue. You were prepared becuase your judgement was sound. Just an oops in reading the list.

Around here, if someone tells you they think you screwed up, they usually include your name to make sure it gets to the right place.

Shadow_oo00, I don't know about you young kids ...

Seriously ... don't think your judgment being questioned, and besides, there's no crime in having to spend the night provided you come well-prepared for that contingency (which, in the experience you shared, you did). It becomes "bad judgment" when one is not prepared, and the overnighter puts one at undue risk and/or necessitates a SAR response. Otherwise, it becomes another "adventure."

My only suggestion, with the benefit of hindsight: given this was an unfamiliar trail, studying a decent topo map pre-hike would've given you some insight about the return trail's steep terrain, and might've influenced your plans.

Dan

Speaking of dear hunting, a guy I used to work with and his girlfriend got snowed in waayyy back in the boonies one winter. Somehow (this was years before cell phones) the authorities got wind of their problem, and had a chopper go in to pull both of them out, after several days of them shivering in the car. This was a big news item, so when the chopper landed at the hospital the cameras were rolling. And his wife happened to be watching. For some reason, she divorced him shortly thereafter...

Hey Shadow, like others said, it doesn't seem anybody was sniping at you. It's just the way this board works; if a new poster doesn't watch closely, they can create a link ("Re:") that's unintentional.

So be cool and stick around. Seems like you belong here.

When dayhiking, often solo, especially on a long trail, I too assume that I may have to bivvy if something goes wrong, so I pack a few extras accordingly. My emergency contacts know that I prep for this; they won't panic unduly if I'm running late, and nobody needs to go into harm's way on my behalf unless there are unusual circumstances..

BTW, most of my long hikes are in the Rocky Mountains. At night, bear and moose use the trails, so at a certain point it's better to hole up and wait for first light.

shadow, my response wasn't in response to your situation... at all! it was a response to the original question at the top of the page.

Sometimes "things" just happen too. Some of you may remember my post from last summer where I was walking around a flooded farm field behind my property somewhat late one evening - in clear view of my house. I was using a GPS to map the boundaries of the flood water so I was walking as close to the edge of the water as I could. I was wearing rubber boots and accidentally stepped into a hole when crossing a shallow (6") portion of the flooded field. One leg sank into the mud which filled one boot with mud & water, and filled the other boot with just water. I did my best to rinse the mud out of the boot, but the act of rinsing in the flood water forced me to put my stockinged foot back into the mud. I was kind of a mess and I knew I didn't have a lot of daylight left.

Anyway, if you've ever walked in wet rubber boots you'll know how tiring and nasty that can be. That apparently minor event - certainly comical in hind-sight - could have turned into an overnight stay and a possibly ugly situation had I been in a more remote area.

Plan ahead, be equipped (not just gear), and use your head. That is what this form and ETS is all about.

A quick look at the topo would have saved a lot of frustration here. GPS is great, but if there is a cliff between you and the waypoint you want to get to that you didn't know about, it isn't worth squat. Map and compass, not GPS, are part of the regularly accepted 10 essentials.\

Bill

Inexperience at one end of the spectrum and over-confidence at the other. Susan's "lack of good judgment" works at either end.

As for Shadow_oo00's experience, I've got no problem with his adventure, looked like a learning experience that you need to enjoy first-hand. There may have been a bit of over-confidence, but as stated they were prepared to stay the night so no harm. You aren't stuck out overnight when you decide to stop and make camp. Sometimes that's good judgment and experience.

I get lost incredibly easily (in fact managed to do it just outside the office a few weeks ago) and can lose a lot of time that way.

I haven't gotten stuck overnight yet, but I've underestimated return time on occasion and once ended up with the park rangers coming after me. They saw my car still in the parking lot as it started getting dark, so they had to presume I was lost or injured, when in fact I was still just trudging back down the nice safe trail. I wish they'd posted their phone number near the entrance gate so I could have called and told them I was fine.

I usually register with the rangers before a hike (and leave the same info in my car) who I am, where I'm going, how equipped, home phone, when expected back, cell phone or no, etc.

About 10 minutes into that movie, I wanted to kill them all myself. I really annoyed my wife by standing and cheering each time one of them got whacked!

Dito, after about 20 minutes did you also get the feeling that you've been conned ever so slightly as well by having to pay to see this heap of merda. Jumped up and shouted 'YES' in the cinema when the last sniveling snot nosed screaming dullard got bumped on the top of the cranium. 'Thank heaven someone has shut her up!'

Not as bad as Jim Carey in the 'Cable Guy' though, walked out after half an hour.

Shadow oo00, you did not do anything wrong. #1 you were prepared.

Time, darkness and mother nature bit you in the butt.

It has happened to all of us.


Welcome

Nothing to worry about, Shadow_oo00. Halcon’s post is technically a reply to IzzyJG99’s earlier post (as noted in the top bar of the post), but contextually is a reply to Susan’s earlier post. Sometimes seeing the structure of all the replies can be difficult in “flat mode”. If you ever get confused about who’s replied to who, try switching your view over to “threaded mode” by choosing it in the Topic Options button at the top of the thread. This board takes a bit of getting used to in order to reply to the post that you’re actually replying to and so forth.