Orienting Yourself Before Going Out

zman308

zman308

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I watched a show on Discovery Health, "I Shouldn't be Alive" This was the story. A couple on vacation in South America are at a Ecco-Lodge. The lodge has a series of nature trails for bird and nature watching. The trails are marked by blazes and the lodge supplies a crude line drawn map to use on the trails. The couple goes out on a day trip and while they are watching birds they notice that the trail they are following seems to be unused. They realize that they have gone off track and are now lost. No problem, he has the map and a compass. To make a long story short, when they left the lodge they thought they were traveling north and I guess he had the map upside down. His solution was to travel south and get back to the lodge. In reality they were going away from the lodge and not toward it. It was getting dark and they were forced to spend the night out in a real jungle. He had a backpack with a SAK, Compass and 2 bottles of water plus some other items. They had to sleep on the ground and were literally ate alive by mosquitoes and ants. After getting no sleep they started out on the trail at first light. The jungle kept getting worse and worse. They used up their water and were getting thirsty. All the water was really grubby looking. The women decided that they could use her bra to filter the water into the bottles. Repeat this for 6 more days and nights, rain, insects, no real food, crappy water. The girlfriend is bipolar and has been without her meds now for 7 days. She has been getting emotionally difficult and is hard to get moving. They have been wandering for days. They decide that they are going to commit suicide with the SAK. Just as the girl is about to start cutting her wrists they here a outboard motor. They move through the brush toward the sound a and come across a dugout canoe with a fisherman who is fishing this obscure Amazon tributary. Happy ending. I guess the point of this story is before you go out is to orient yourself with a map to the surroundings. On all maps the top of the map is north. Don't assume the tourist map made by activities director at some lodge knows this. Know which way you are travelling from your starting point. Note which way rivers, tracks, roads, and power lines go. If you go in this direction than you will hit this landmark or that one. Pick out a landmark if possible and keep it in perspective. Stay Found!!!!
 
Or bring a GPS w/ a high sensativity chipset & extra batteries and save your starting point as a waypoint ... though I haven't heard how these GPS's do in a jungle-type canopy.

If nothing else, orient the map using the compass before heading out. Heck, even when going to Sea World the first thing I did was to orient the map with a small compass, just to make sure I knew where I was and which directions were which.

I would suspect that more typical compass navigation would be difficult in heavy jungle vegitation where vision is limited to a few yards. Again, no personal experience in jungle navigation.
 
That brings up a great point on dealing with emotionally troubled persons in a survival situation.

That might be harder than being lost. Imagine the negativity you would have to negotiate. This guy was about to commit suicide.
 
I wonder if the GPS will work under the jungle canopy also? Good thinking on the bra to filter the chunks out. I would taken a machete with me and various other things. Medication goes no matter what.
Yeah I think getting lost in a jungle would suck. Everything looks the same and like kenk said you can't use typical compass navigation and you can't see more than a few yards in any direction. I guess if you can climb a tree that is high enough you can see some things, but if you have to do it you have to deal the snakes and not falling out of the tree.
 
This is a time when having that compass, at least, would have been useful, even without the map. Being in a dense jungle and having a hard time keeping a straight line could keep you lost a lot longer. If you were smart enough to make a general bearing at the onset, you could at least keep a straight hike into an appropriate reverse direction.

But seriously, suicide with an SAK?
 
Funny, but the jungle has a way of administering some needed Clorox to the gene pool sometimes.
 
SpookyPistolero said:
This is a time when having that compass, at least, would have been useful, even without the map.
Click to expand...

When truly lost a compass with no bearing taken at the start gets you more lost in a straight line, useless. How many carry a compass as part of a survival kit and never take a bearing before they go out. Many in my experience.

Skam
 
skammer said:
When truly lost a compass with no bearing taken at the start gets you more lost in a straight line, useless. How many carry a compass as part of a survival kit and never take a bearing before they go out. Many in my experience.

Skam
Click to expand...

Certainly not great without an initial bearing, but not useless. If you have even a fair idea of the landscape and your general location (ex. 'I know I drove east to get to this trailhead and arrived at roughly the southern edge of the woods') it can get you oriented enough to pick a good direction.

I've been in a similar situation (to my example, not the story) and a compass gave me a nice helping hand in the right direction. YMMV.
 
I was in the Black Hills doing a geological survey with maps, air photos and a couple of Brunton compasses and our party got sort of lost. This was in the late 60s before GPS. We spotted an outcrop on the air photos that we needed to examine. We drove the truck as far up the dirt road as we could and then set off on foot. The air photos were absolutely worthless. All you could see is parallel ridges covered with trees. No visible landmarks. They all looked the same. We matched it up with the topo map and headed out in direction of the outcrop. The trees were so thick that we had no land marks to shoot or navigate by. We climbed ridges and descended into the valleys for over four hours before finding the outcrop at the end of a ridge. On our way out we started down the ridge and found that that a stream had cut a canyon too steep for us to traverse. We tried to traverse around it and somehow got messed up. About three hours later we found that we had not hit the dirt road yet. We took the topo and decided to travel north till we hit the main highway in the direction of our truck. It was a real butt buster, up and down steep ridges and valleys thick with vegatation. We made it out at twilight and were about three miles below where we had parked our truck. Luckily we hitched a ride from some lumber people to the side road where are truck was parked. We came out of this tired and wiser. A compass and map are useful if you have landmarks to navigate by. If not you are using what we call dead reconing and your intuition. It is hard to do a compass traverse in thick trees going uphill or downhill. Just look at topos of some parts of Alaska or the west. The whole quad has hardly any relief, many streams and bogs and no landmarks. This probably is what the jungle or rainforest looks like. Very hard to navigate in.
 
I stop and look behind every couple minutes when Im in new country , and try and fix a landmark , when I go walkabout in new country , it seems I walk away from camp only a short way , but getting ome its a looooong hike , having land marks helps me to know the way and ease the stress about getting back without getting lost
I often get ribbed for it if we are with others , but it works for me ..
its suprising how different a trail looks going back over it the other way .
 
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