Sooooo..... How Lost Have You Really Been?

[+srt4guy]

all topic aside about setting a waypoint for the car, we all know that as you drive up the road and find that a cache is only.17m ahead (straitline bushwack) that you are gonna hop out and do a quick recon run thru the woods. or had a brain cramp and did not set the waypoint, just this one time. how lost have you been? has the fire dept ever had to come get you? or did you spend a sleepless night in the woods? what do you carry with you in the event this scares the hell out of you and it really happens .

Tim

[Earthdog Patrick]

My idiot boss, Lead Dog, has got us so lost that he marks our location as a waypoint, then hikes us as far as he cares to in one direction, then takes us back to our lost spot and tries again in another compass point, ad infinitum until we fianally strike some familiar point or road. He's a real idiot, with no sense of direction whatsover. I usually lead us out so we don't have to spend the night in the Magic Forest!! At least he usually rewards me with an ice cream each time I save us...

[+briansnat]

I think WH might have a good story here .

 

Personally I was only really lost once, in my pre geocaching days. I was hiking with a group of friends and we decided to take a "shortcut" and bushwack back to the car. They say you start walking in circles when lost and you do. After several hours of wandering we came back to the same small clearing twice.

 

I started feeling a bit panicky, but calmed down and climbed a very tall pine tree nearby. From my perch I was able to see the road in the distance. From my spot I directed my friends towards the road by following their shouts and telling them wich way to go. Once they arrived at the road, I followed their shouts towards them. Turns out we were never more than a few hundred yards from the road, but kept missing it.

 

A noisy but effective way to get out of there.

Edited October 8, 2005 by briansnat

[+trail hound]

I never use a waypoint to mark my vehicle. I set my gps to show a track log and simply turn around and follow the track back to my car....Works for me.

[WH]

I think WH might have a good story here .

Ok. I'll spill it.

 

Way back when I was a brand new cacher with only 20 finds or so under my belt, a new cache popped up and I wanted to be FTF. I had never been to the area where the cache was but that didn't deter me. I didn't have a map so it took me a while of driving up and down roads until I found parking only .3 mile away. When I left the car, I still had a good 3 hours of daylight left so I didn't bother bringing a flashlight.

 

The trail started out OK but disappeared quickly. I soon found myself in the middle of a swamp bushwhacking through chest high weeds. The weeds were so thick, I could not see my feet so I kept tripping over tree branches, rocks and other obstacles hidden in the grass.

 

I pushed forward, not realizing that this was taking allot longer than I thought and daylight was waning fast. I soon came to a river and my arrow was pointing directly across it and I realized that I had parked on the wrong side. Not wanting to give up, I spotted a tree that had fallen across the river and I made a VERY slow and careful walk across it.

 

Once on the other side, I pulled my GPS out of my pocket and the arrow was now pointing back to the other side of the river where I started from....DOH!!! I also no notice that it is getting dark fast. Knowing how difficult the tree crossing was in the daylight, I didn't even want to attempt it in the dark with no flashlight, so I started walking along the river looking for any type of bridge. There was no trail, I had no flashlight and the mosquitoes were eating me alive.

 

It is now 11PM, pitch black and I'm in a swamp with a decent size river between my car and myself. The only indication of where I am are the coordinates on my GPS so I decide that it's time to call for assistance. I pull out my cell phone and dial 911. I tell the dispatcher my situation and the only information I can give them as to where I am are my GPS coordinates. They asked me what I was doing out there and I told them about geocaching and even directed them to the cache page that brought me out here. I took them a bit, but a combination of the cache page and the coordinates I provided, they were able to determine where I was. They just had to figure out how to get to me. I offered to walk to a road if they could give me a direction but the insisted that I stay put and let them come to me.

 

The first thing they tried was to send a boat up the river, but there were too many obstructions to get up there. They finally decide to head in on foot. It was around 1AM when they finally got to me. I learned later than one of the rescuers had fallen into the river while hiking out there.

 

Once back at the road, the paramedics gave me a quick look over and I assured them that I was fine with the exception of head to toe bug bites and utter embarrassment.

[+TheGertridgeExplorers]

I never use a waypoint to mark my vehicle. I set my gps to show a track log and simply turn around and follow the track back to my car....Works for me.

I usually rely on the tracklog too, but once Hub & I did a cache that is all bushwhacking through thick swampy woods with lots of blow down. Once we had found the cache & turned to head out I discovered that the tracklog was full & our journey had not been recorded. Thank goodness I have a good enough sense of direction to get us back out to the trail & back to our truck. From now on I will mark a waypoint!

 

-Donna G

[+Sue Gremlin]

There was no trail, I had no flashlight and the mosquitoes were eating me alive.

 

It is now 11PM, pitch black and I'm in a swamp with a decent size river between my car and myself.

 

I pull out my cell phone and dial 911.

 

The first thing they tried was to send a boat up the river, but there were too many obstructions to get up there. They finally decide to head in on foot. It was around 1AM when they finally got to me. I learned later than one of the rescuers had fallen into the river while hiking out there.

Yeah, yeah, lost and scared and bitten, blah, blah, yadda yadda yadda. Did you ever find the cache?

 

 

[+srt4guy]

i'm on the f.d. here and was wondering if we will ever get the call to get someone. i talked the chief into getting gps , handhelds for each engine and ambulance. i'v gotten turned around once and it scared me to death because there is no way i'm gonna call my fire dept. to come find me, the ridicule would last a life time(maps in my mailbox, change of address stuff. these guys are brutal.) i give my wife the coords of where i'm going, and in my fanny pack i carry an m.r.e., (has matches and food)space blanket, and a really small tube tent.(dollar store 2.99)i'd rather sleep in the woods for a night than call for help. and about being lost. we were fighting a brush fire and it got very late by the time we were done. had flashlights but the fire covered acres. water packs and hand tools were all we had. no hose to follow so we radioed back and had them turn on the siren to guide us out.

so who else has been lost?

Tim

[+Teamhawaii1981 & blueicyrose]

WH that is a great story! Can you post the cache page if you don't mind, I gotta look it up on G.E.!

 

The most lost I was was about a 20 or 30 minute cache round trip. It took me and 2 friends about 6.5 hours. This was an early cache, and I did not know about the flares on trees following paths in the woods. So in the maze of trails I got extremely lost in a swamp. Eventually the trails ran out and me and two people I was trying to introduce to caching were bushwacking through chest high ferns and brush. The sun started to set very quickly, all we had on our minds was the black bear and coyote warning signs at the trailhead, and I had no idea where we were. And worse, I was losing reception from the heavy tree cover every few hundred feet. Eventually we came out into a huge field and I was able to get good reception and we walked to the cache along the field edge. I made a quick trade, looked up and saw the flares on the trees...the trip out was MUCH easier than the trip in.

 

That was the last cache one of those people went on with me.

[+sept1c_tank]

Once upon a time, in a pine forest during a raging snowstorm, I ventured off the familiar trail to bushwhack to a nearby creek. After walking nearly 45 minutes in a straight line I came across some relatively fresh tracks; there was someone else out there!

 

Then it occurred to me that the stranger was wearing the same kind of boots as me. I was the stranger, and you can’t believe how strange I felt when I realized I had walked in a circle…in a familiar place that was unfamiliar. And I thought only idiots walked in circles!

[+Night Stalker]

Never really been lost, but I sure was misplaced for a while. I was caching in the woods in the Houston area. I have found that my GPS really doesn't like those trees very well. After finding the cache I stood up and looked around. Had no clue which way to go. Good thing I had my track on. I was able to figure out which way was back. Didn't use the track log after that since I knew that I had done a great deal of wandering before I found the cache. I pulled out my trusty compass and went straight back. It is a scary feeling though when you are not sure which way is back.

[Clan Riffster]

Been lost twice, both pre-GPSr...

 

I was bowhunting in Ocala National Forest, parked my truck on one of the infinate dirt roads that bisect the woods, and started my stalk. Crossed several more dirt roads in search of Bambi, but figured I could always find my way out. Ha! After spending the night out there, Viv made me buy my first GPSr, a Magellan GPS-12.

 

Sometime later I was hunting on a friend's property near Ocala. 30 acres, surrounded by zillions of other acres. I didn't bring my shiny new GPSr with me cuz I was so familiar with these woods that I figured I couldn't get lost. A thunderstorm from Hell showed up, with lightning popping trees all around me, and I figured that was my cue to get back to my truck. In the downpour, I misjudged my direction. After walking 30 minutes, when I should've been out of the woods in 10, I stopped and waited for the storm to pass. Naturally, it waited till dark-30 to stop raining. I couldn't see the stars, so navigation was out. Tried several attempts, but couldn't find the road. After what seemed like an eternity, I heard another vehicle driving down the road, and followed the sound out of the woods, then hiked back to my truck.

[+Ed_S]

i'm on the f.d. here <deletion> there is no way i'm gonna call my fire dept. to come find me, the ridicule would last a life time(maps in my mailbox, change of address stuff. these guys are brutal.)

 

I'm a firefighter, too, and I agree completely! Just one more reason why firefighting isn't for the weak!

 

we were fighting a brush fire and it got very late by the time we were done.

 

That's something people wouldn't think about unless they've been there - once the fire goes out, the light it produced goes out, too! You did know enough to empty the water out of your Indian Tanks before you hiked back to the rig, didn't you?

[+ghost9mm]

Just remember...You are never lost if you do not care where you are...

[+AuntieWeasel]

I spent my entire pre-GPS life lost. I have an appallingly bad sense of direction.

 

And I've managed it a few times with a GPS, too, if I've gone down a hill I can't get back up, or through a swamp I'm not confident I could retrace exactly, or find myself on the wrong side of a water hazard. I've lived my life as a bleached skeleton waiting to happen.

[+BadAndy]

I have a brother that needs to weigh in on this post....

[+trgrhappy]

how lost have I actually been?? Got a couple hours? short version....went hunting with my younger step-brother, got rained on all day. got snowed on all night...walked the better part of 2 days. met alot of nice people on the Kootenai county search and rescue. Bad Andy and the team he was with found us. The Sheriff told us they pull an average of 1 out of 10 lost hunters out of that area of the Kiniksu wilderness alive. To this day I firmly believe I wouldn't be here today if BA hadn't PERSISTED in getting the sheriff to send the team in our direction. The Sheriff was sure we weren't where we were. I've said it before and I'll say it again.....thanks bro.

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

I've never been lost, I always knew right where I was, but there have been times when the location of the place I wanted to be was unknown to me!

 

I have a place on Lay Lake, essentially grew up there, have hiked the woods and fished the waters around it for most of my 50 years. Almost literally know every inch of the place.

 

One January night out fishing we get a bit cold, it's maybe 2 a.m., 25°, the water in the minnow bucket is freezing over, so we head for the house.

 

Heavy fog. No matter, we know we're on the main body of the lake, just go south, keeping the shoreline on our left, find the opening to Paint Creek and follow the north shoreline 3 miles east to the house. Be there in 15 minutes, done it many a foggy night.

 

An hour later. Fog is getting REALLY thick, dang but it's cold - the mouth of the creek HAS to be about here...nothing looks familiar...where the heck are we? We went south, right? How'd we miss the creek entrance - the darn thing is 200 feet wide!? We both know it like the back of our hand. Can't miss it.

 

Can't see the front of the boat from the back, can only follow the shore now by repeatedly running into it.

 

Spotlights, even the boat's running lights, are no good - they just create a blinding reflection in the fog.

 

Peer through the fog at the bank, looking for a landmark. I swear I have never seen this place before! Stop for a moment to get our bearings and HHHONNNKKK - oh dadgum, that's the spillway opening warning on Lay Dam!

 

How'd we get this close? It sounds REALLY close. Frighteningly close. They're opening the dam!

 

This is serious, you don't muck around by a dam this big in zero visibility - we must have missed Paint Creek and come too far south - we're at the dam!

 

Way too dangerous; the current created by the dam spillway opening will take small boats right over the dam, it's happened before. We tie firmly to the bank and try to get some sleep, knowing dawn won't help us, it'll be 10 o'clock before this fog lifts and we can move safely.

 

Man is it cold!

 

Dawn. Gray. Zero visibility, literally - this is a sixteen foot boat and I can't see my Dad sitting in the back! As 9 a.m. approaches I am past cold, but beginning to make out the shoreline we are tied to.

 

Totally unfamiliar. Never been here. I spend the morning hours pondering how we could have made such an error and wondering where we must be.

 

A breeze! At 9:30 the fog lifts quickly, almost magically, and Dad and I sit in wonder and stare disbelievingly at - our house. We're 150 yards from it, tied to property we've owned since 1962, and miles from the dam.

 

1974. Foot-hills of the Superstition Mountains, Tempe AZ, visiting a friend's cattle ranch.

 

He's got this clapped-out old '65 Rambler American Wagon with a bucket seat welded to the roof for coyote hunting. Charming car - the brakes leak so you have to get out and pee in the master cylinder every now and then to get them to work.

 

Coyotes kill pets and young cattle, and the county has a bounty on them. Pays, I dunno, something like $5 a head for dead coyotes. He uses this old beater of a car to hunt 'em at night.

 

OK, I am game for most anything, let's go! He hands me a shotgun and I climb up into the bucket seat on top of the car, and we're off.

 

"Uh, Bob? Hey Bob!? This thing doesn't have a seat belt!" I yell.

 

"No worries!" he hollers out the window "There's nothing to hit out here!"

 

We're flying across the desert. Moonless night, pitch black but for our headlights.

 

Coyotes are amazingly fast and nimble - several outperform Bob's jalopy and/or driving skills before we get behind one dumb enough to run in a straight line.

 

We're traveling maybe 30 mph, but in an unbelted seat bumping over the desert on top of a car in the dark it feels like 100. Now I know where the expression "sucking wind" comes from...it's all that's keeping me in the seat!

 

I aim the shotgun and all of a sudden I am running, trying to keep my feet under me, three quick steps across the hood and off into space! I tuck the shotgun hard across my stomach so that when the darn thing goes off it won't be me in front of it, and hit the ground rolling, quite perplexed, shaken but essentially undamaged.

 

Nothing to hit, huh.

 

Seems Bob has found the only tree stump for a hundred miles, and the car is now propped on top of it at a crazy angle. A flashlight inspection reveals transmission shifter linkage dangling with finality from below the car. We're stuck, big time.

 

"So, Bob, do we have a blanket? Looks like we'll be sleeping in the car"

 

"No, and we're not sleeping in the car - my place is just over there" (he points out into the desert blackness) "And Phoenix is under that light you see in the sky over that way...either way, can't be more than ten miles"

 

Well, if we have to walk home it seems better to do it in the cool of night, rather than the sweltering heat of the day.

 

We head off towards his place.

 

"Say, Bob, tell me again, how do we know we're walking towards your place?"

 

"Don't worry," says Bob, "I know this land. I've lived here all of my life" Spoken authoritatively, reassuringly.

 

We've not gone far when Bob stops, looks around. "Well, I think it's this way"

 

Huh. "Bummer, Bob, what say we return to the car, get some sleep, walk out in the morning?"

 

"OK, yeah, we better do that - I think that's Phoenix under the light on the horizon, but heck, distances can fool ya out here at night."

 

We turn back and - no car. "How can this be?" I ask, "We haven't walked 200 yards! Where's the dang car?" This car is eighteen feet long and all white - how do you lose something like that?"

 

We walk about, looking for the car, this huge station wagon out in the wide open. Never saw it. Well, however you do it, we've done it. Let's just camp right here.

 

Clippety-clonk. Clippety-clonk. Clippety-clonk. There's someone out there riding a horse. "Howdy" I call. Come on in the camp" Which wasn't a camp at all, but rather a shallow grassy depression we'd found to lie down in. Clippety-clonk. Clippety-clonk. Clippety-clonk. He's riding in circles around us, just out of view. Won't speak, just slowly rides in circles around us.

 

"There is a reason these are called the Superstitions", Bob says, quite unhelpfully, and goes on to tell me some of the weird things that give them their name and reputation.

 

We gather grass and whatever we can find that will burn and start a fire. Eyes. Red, glowing eyes, reflecting the firelight, all around us. Coyotes. Lots of them. Well, two, at least.

 

We're out here to kill coyotes. The gun is back at the car. We're lost and on foot and it's dark and those coyotes are watching us. Superstition Mountains, yeah, Bob, tell me another dadgum story about the Superstitions. The man on the horse is the Coyote God, here to watch revenge being had.

 

"I never even shot at one!" I want to yell, but don't. I don't think Coyote God cares - I had killing coyotes on my mind, and that was enough. Clippety-clonk. Clippety-clonk. Clippety-clonk. Red eyes, rustling coyote footsteps and coyote howls, bone-chilling, in the night.

 

We take turns through the night, one trying to sleep and the other keeping the fire stoked high. We know that when the fire dies down the coyotes will come, emboldened, and that will be all for us.

 

A very long night.

 

Dawn. Gray light. Enough to see by. Enough to stand up and see the big white car, maybe 30 feet away.

 

Oh yeah, I have been lost!

Ed

[+sept1c_tank]

Really good one, TAR (you shouldn't have left the gun in the car)!

You should be writing for Today's Cacher!

Edited October 9, 2005 by sept1c_tank

[+briansnat]

Really good one, TAR (you shouldn't have left the gun in the car)!

You should be writing for Today's Cacher!

I've seen lots of horror movies. Horror movie rule #3. Never leave the gun behind.

[+reveritt]

The one thing I took away from my Boy Scout days was how to avoid getting lost in the woods. The technique was simple--carry a compass and a map, and refer to them frequently. The GPS bactrack feature is helpful, too, but sometimes I definitely do not want to go back the way I came.

[+Mule Ears]

TheAlabamaRambler said:

I've never been lost, I always knew right where I was, but there have been times when the location of the place I wanted to be was unknown to me!

 

TAR, those are excellent tales, well told. The coyote incident reminds me of the famous Jack London story in which a hunter in the Alaskan wilderness sits in the waning light of a dying campfire waiting for a ring of wolves to close in. As the ring of firelight contracts, the wolves draw closer...

 

I quoted your opening sentence, because it really gets to the heart of being 'lost' with GPS. You can know exactly where you are but finding your way through or out can be an adventure.

 

On a recent hike to a couple of wilderness caches, I departed from my planned route to take advantage of some game/immigrant trails I found. Since the distance to my objective kept going down, I didn't realize that I was getting seriously off-course, with a deep canyon separating me from my route. The area is covered in dense juniper-pine-oak woods, so landmarks were no help. I finally realized what I'd done and bushwhacked across the canyon to get back on course (at the expense of an extra mile or so and an additional thousand feet of elevation gain/loss).

 

On the way back, I fell into the same trap. (Yeah, I know, shame on me.) And I had left my energy snacks back at the Jeep. I bonked pretty badly on the return trip and just beelined across hill and dale to the dirt road I'd driven in on. As I dragged my sorry self up that road for the final mile/500 feet of elevation a pickup heading my way materialized. I thought about putting out a thumb, but rejected the idea. This is a character-building experience, I thought and laughed like a loon. Now the driver wouldn't pick me up anyway.

 

Final tally--9 miles of rugged bushwhacking and over a mile of elevation gain/loss.

 

The next week I scheduled a remedial hike in the same area, used my map, compass, GPS and my head.

 

My name is Mule Ears and that's my confession.

[davethecave]

I wasn't really lost at all. I was eleven years old and camping with the scouts.

It was day 4 or 5 and I hadn't used the latrine. It was getting desperate and as a shy 11 year-old I sneaked off to the latrine in a tent in the woods without telling anyone.

 

Given the timespan since I had last been, I had a few difficulties and things were not as simple as they should have been.

 

Anyway, it was a great camp full of late night stories by camfires and lots of physical activities during the day. Sitting there alone in the latrine I fell asleep.......for four hours.

 

We were in a wooded area with lots of caves and quarries all around. The scout leaders had been desperately searching and had called the police to help in the search.

 

I was only found when one of my fellow scouts needed the latrine.

 

Given the circumstances, a laxative might have been more useful than a GPS

 

Dave

[+Team Maccabee]

Ok, I'll add a story from the pre-Geocaching days about GPS saving our tusches.

 

In the summer of 1993, I was a sociology grad student doing research for the NPS, interviewing fur trappers in the interior of Alaska (Denali area) about how they traditionally used shelters (you know, cabins, tents, etc.). As part of this research, we went in a helicopter to look at and get the details on a few of the cabins along trap lines from Lake Minchumina, AK (see cache Denali View for Lake Minchumina, AK).

 

Well, I was excited, being that this was my first helicopter trip. So we fly the scenic route out to this one cabin (Castle Rock) and we're circling looking for a place to land, when the engine noise changes and the pilot says "We're going down." Now the first thought in my head is "we're not supposed to be landing yet..." and my next thought is "so what is crash landing position in a helicopter?" To make a short story a little longer, we autorotated down from 500 ft to the ground, and just as we hit the trees (luckily, they were relatively small black spruce), the pilot starts the engine again and we only have a rough landing. BUT we can't get out of there because our main rotor is damaged.

 

So here we are... in the Alaskan wilderness, 150+ miles from the nearest road, in what turns out to be a radio dead zone. BUT we have the GPS coordinates from the helicopter before we went down. So we hike a mile or so to the cabin area, and, on the way, we finally reach the NPS and they scramble another helicopter (oh yippee, another helicopter ride...) to get us out of there.

 

We would have had a LONG walk out of there otherwise!

 

Team Maccabee's Abba

[+sarhound]

I'm almost ashamed to say that I managed to get myself lost in a small nature preserve near my house. I've been going out there for the last 4 years with my bloodhounds, and I know the area like the back of my hand. To make it worse, I'm the senior K9 handler for my search and rescue team....

 

I was out with my oldest hound looking for a cache; evening was approaching, and the shadows were lengthening. Miss Molly and I entered a thicket area that was liberally laced with mesquite trees (bear in mind that in Texas, everything either bites, stings, or stabs you here.) A branch whipped back and caught me in the face-- 4 inch thorns. It ripped my glasses off my face; I heard them hit the ground behind me. I froze on the spot, since I can't see my hand at the end of my arm without them.

 

Being reasonably well prepared, I dropped my pack on the ground, tied off Miss Molly, and got on my hands and knees to pat down the ground. I worked my way out in a spiral, but couldn't find them. It was getting dark, and I was having difficulty seeing the GPS screen. I pulled out my flagging tape, tied off a triangular area where I had been hit, and got on the cel phone to my husband, who is our team incident commander. He knew I was in it knee-deep without my vision, so he hauled over to the preserve. I had managed to get back out to a paved path area, but Miss Molly was overheating, so I had to park there and water her to cool her off. My husband has only been out to the preserve a few times, so he wasn't as familiar with the trails as me; he was headed in the right general direction, but was off by quite a distance. After much whistle-blowing on my part, he finally found us.

 

We decided to go back in to look for my glasses-- no driving, no work without them. We got there and he did a thorough ground and tree search, but no luck. By now, it's full dark. The undergrowth there was very thick, and we had no satellite lock, so the GPS was of no use. I was bleeding from multiple mesquite stabs, hot, and thoroughly pi**ed by this time and wanted nothing more than to get home to a shower and bed, but we couldn't find the way back out. Thank God for Miss Molly. She knows the command "take us home," since I use it on every return we make from training trails that we run. I looked at her (she was more than ready to get out of there by that time) and asked her, "Can you take us home?"

 

Never let anyone say that bloodhounds aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. She made a circle, then headed out. About 10 minutes later, we were on a dirt trail that I recognized. A mile later, she had us back to the truck.

 

The eerie thing is, when I went back to check the tracklog for the GPS later (after replacing my glasses,) when the GPS picked up a lock again, she was almost exactly on the trail that we took into the undergrowth. There's a lot of folks who think that scent theory is voodoo science, but I can attest to the fact that it's an extremely valuable resource.

 

Needless to say, I now wear my glasses on a tether when I go out. I think I'm also going to tell my husband to scent the hounds off the truck seat if I fail to show up one day...they'll find me.

 

Gotta love those hounds...

[+GClouse]

Back in my college days a Tennessee Tech, I went out on my bicycle to explore the roads north of Cookeville TN on a Saturday afternoon. After being chased by a pair of Dobermans that I did not wish to encounter again, I ended up in an area full of circles and cul-de-sacs. I knew I was somwhere north of town, but every road seems to circle, or dead-end. It got dark and I could see the glow of the city lights in the distance, but still could not find a road heading that direction, didn't circle or dead-end.

Around midnight, traffic got really bad from the high-school kids returning from the drive-in theatres in the area, and after the traffic died down, an ncredibly dense fog, the kind that even blocks sound, settled in.

Finally, A found myself at a rural crossroad, at 2:30 am, trying to guess which road to take, when I heard the faint sound of a car traveling at high speed. AHA! must be the main road. I took the road that headed in that direction, and after about a mile, I came to a two lane highway. I was about 20 miles north of Cookeville, and by the time I made it back to the campus, the sun was just coming up. I think I slept the rest of the day. After that I made sure I kept a map in the saddlebag on the bicycle.

[+fishingfools]

Just remember...You are never lost if you do not care where you are...

or where you are going

 

Been lost twice, once with GPS, lost lock, no compass. I carry one now.

 

Once pre GPS, lost in the woods near my parents cabin for a couple hours, almost freaked, but found my way back. They hadn't noticed I was gone. No respect I tell ya.

[+wornout]

When I started geocaching I did a night time cache where one follows reflectors into a county winderness park. There were three of us on this hund. The coordinates of the cache were to the trail head and from there all that was needed was a flashlight. So, I left the GPSr in the car. Off we went. An hour later we had the cache and followed the trail back to the truck, almost. We missed the trail to the parking area by about 1/3 a mile and came down in a neighboorhood about 3/4 of a mile from the car. I did have a backup GPSr in my backpack and luckly had the cache page in there too. I punched in the coordinates where we parked and said 'that way'. Unfortunately, the streets in this area were all courts up to the mountains edge, so, it was a lot longer trip to the car going out to the crossroad, down a couple of courts and then back to the trail head. Lesson learned, ALWAYS take the GPSr and turn on track back.

[rynd]

Nope, Not once, No way, I'm not THAT stup.... Aaaaaw crap were am I.

[Utsman]

Been lost once....I’m in the military and had just finished a exercise and was on down time before we would get picked up the next day. My friend and myself decided to go for a swim in the river to clean up a bit. We knew the river was 800M away and we decided to bushwhack...we made it took the river had nice swim found the place where we exited the woods and started walking back to base camp.

 

I knew something wasn't right because the scenery wasn't quite the same as before. We had come to this really big cliff and had to walk around we decided to go west. We knew we we're slightly o ffbut figured we would hear the laughing and shouting at the camp or at least hit the road behind our camp.

 

We missed the camp and hit the road and decided to go east, we walked for a good 45min and didn't find the trail connecting to our camp so we turned around and went west for 2 1/2 hr before we spotted a Truck heading out way, we flagged it down and got a ride back to camp (which was east).

 

We were no more than 30M away from the trail when we were walking east. The funny part of the story was I had a GPS and a 1:25000 scale map in my tactical vest which I didn't bother grabbing before we left.

 

Lessons learned...bring your navigating tools (and know how to use them).

 

Needless to say after all that I was as dirty as before I took the swim.

[+graveyard mom]

Nope, never. Really. That's why I put that as my tag line! I am just lucky to have an incredible sense of direction and mad map reading skills. I have had to pull over often and turn around on a trip because I was driving and noone else in the car could read the friggin map. That is annoying. I am teaching my 6yr old to read maps now, and she is better at it that anyone else in the family(other than me!).

 

I've bushwacked through woods with hubby for hours in the Smokies and locally looking for cemeteries and benchmarks(before I had a GPS and even after but before I learned how to use it), and once we decided to head back, I had no problem getting us straight back to where we started.

 

I guess I'm just lucky!

[markandlynn]

I never use a waypoint to mark my vehicle. I set my gps to show a track log and simply turn around and follow the track back to my car....Works for me.

We do this but it gets confusing if you drive to the cache with the GPS on !.

We ended up the wrong side of edingborough once

signed the log book at 20:42pm.  We now had the slightly tricky problem of getting back to our car at 9pm at night in an unfamiliar city. We read the bus timetable and decided that a number 22 to Murray field was the best initial move, we had no change so had to pay with a five pound note for this trip. We got off at Murray field and started to use the GPS to tell us where the car was while walking in the rightish direction. After a while we decided to flag down a taxi that drove us to near where the car was for another £10. From here the GPS told us 0.66 miles to the car yippee that's a short stroll so off we set down the road and to the car park. The car was still in one piece and we set off for Peebles finally arriving back at the cottage at 11:30pm tired and very relieved to be back home and finished with the water of Leith.

This was the last of the cache's we visited following Haggis Hunter's Water of Leith bookmark list over two days 20 ish miles 12 other caches and about 10 hours of total walking time.