Serious but necessary discussion-Mistakes.

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PayetteRucker

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There are some risks with our form of recreation, as there is with any. But the best way to learn is through each other's mistakes. So what mistake did you make in the field that caused you to get lost, injured, go hungry or spend a long freezing sleepless night in the woods? What advice can you share that you learned through experience NOT to do?
I'll go first. On a recent trip to the Seven Devils, a range of sheer rock peaks at 9,000 feet outside of Riggins, Idaho, I got lost trying to pick my way to the top of the tallest peak, He Devil. The trails were not marked anywhere but at the trailhead. The trail was extremely steep and rocky, to the point where ropes are almost necessary. It appeared that the trail turned to a rock ledge, maybe two and a half feet wide. It went around a bend and disappeared. I looked up, decided there was no way the trail was supposed to continue up, and took the ledge instead. It was all sidestepping and handholds and the ledge got thinner and thinner. I finally found myself stuck on a 1000 foot rock face with no trail, scared sh!tless on a ledge the width of Pamella Anderson's thong, wondering how the hell I got into that situation. I broke out the two things in the front pocket of my pack, my pipe and my Spot emergency GPS beacon. I lit up the pipe and took a few minutes to calm down and decide what the best course of action was. After a while of fervent praying and calming my nerves through nicotine ingestion, I decided if I got myself into this situation, I can get myself out. With shakey legs I made my way back across that tiny ledge towards the trail, and with some very sore fingers continued up the steep trail to the top. My name is now in the register atop He Devil, but that was probably the most scared and panicked I have ever been. I took a few things away from this event. 1 is if you don't know, don't rush-consult your maps closely, track where you came, where you are going, where exactly you are and which turn you should take. I was trying to make it up He Devil and back down by noon because I had a deadline to meet later that day. 2, if possible, you haven't taken a trail before go with someone who has. Unfortunately for me there were 3 cars in the parking lot when I took off the previous day so that luxury I did not have. 2, DO NOT PANIC. It is much easier to prevent yourself from panicking than it is to get over it and stop shaking. It costs you so much energy, you sweat out all your fluids, and you think irrationally. To this day I don't know if I made the right decision or not, to get myself out of there or call for help, but I lived to tell the tale. So lets hear your stories!
 
If your going to be doing something that requires a license, ATV'ing, boating dont cheap out and think you know everything, take the course and learn something, I can guarantee that you don't know everything about it.
 
Stick to the original plan.

It's not necessary to push the limits of everything just because you can and like to suffer. It will get you one day.

Pack water socks so you can cross water and not have to wear buckets on your feet for the rest of the trip.

Walking stick: Useful in so many ways.

W&SS is the best.
 
I was hiking in the carpathian mountains in romania, and I was still a teen at the time. I was hiking with my grandfather and someone else, who generally likes to be in charge, let's call him Vlad.

At one point, Vlad was like, Hey let's go this way I know a shortcut. Shortcut took about an hour or two longer than the trail would have been, and we went down the side of the mountain as the water runs. It did get a bit freaky at one point as it was going to getting later in the day, and no sign of the "shortcut" in sight. Also seeing the occasional cattle skull, just lying there.

We did make it down safely not too long after the skull incident. So I suppose the moral is just because it looks like a shortcut, it might not be. Needless to say, didn't really go hiking with them again. (It's certainty not the first time it happened)
 
wulfshrunting said:
Stick to the original plan.

It's not necessary to push the limits of everything just because you can and like to suffer. It will get you one day.

Pack water socks so you can cross water and not have to wear buckets on your feet for the rest of the trip.

Walking stick: Useful in so many ways.

W&SS is the best.
Click to expand...

Where can one find these mysterious water socks? :D

This is a good thread, keep them coming.

I wasn't prepared for a cold night camping last Spring and wasn't so cold I had to leave, but it got pretty bad. Definitely pack for the worst.
 
I took a friend of mine into the hills with me a couple years ago. It was April. Kentucky April is crazy, you get left over January and a tease of May.

The day was overcast, but nothing too bad.

I had my jacket and my usual stuff.

He got out of his Tracker wearing a teeshirt, pants and a pair of SANDALS.

"Sure you don't wanna change those, cowboy?"

"Nope, I'll be fine."

"Okie dokie, here we go."


So we set off, only going to be gone for a few hours.

We had been in the mountains for about an hour when it started to spit rain. Then it began to mist.

It was about 50 degrees outside.

He wanted to set up a hooch using a poncho I had brought along. So I left it for him to do.

I went to get as much standing dry wood as I thought we'd need (his feet were soaked from the wet grass and foliage).

I left him for about 15 minutes, not more than 30 yards away.

When I got back to him, his hands were shaking and the hooch still wasn't set up.

"You freezing?"

"Freezing my big ass off."

"Didn't take long, did it?"

"Man, it's barely raining. I didn't even notice I was getting soaked."

So I got the hooch set up, got a fire going and got him dried off and warmed up with some hot chicken broth. Back down the mountain, where he learned a valuable lesson:

Sandles is a bad idear in April. It don't take long to become debilitated and get close to hypothermia, slight rain is a slick little booger--you get soaked and don't even realize it.
 
Here's one that our fearless mod learned the hardway.

Avoid setting up a hammock early in the morning while the trees are heavy with dew.

before


cause when you get too it later, you may have a hard time getting in..

after



Yup thats about 10 feet high and extremely tight.

It took 3 of us to flex that tree to get just enough slack in the line to undo it.
 
haha, I love that tonym. I'd really like to see this thread get big, I know we all have lots of stories/experience about what NOT to do.
 
Don't take a 45-degree sleeping bag when the temps get down to 15 at night. Hypothermia is not fun.

Never cross sketchy ice. Falling through the ice is not fun. Well, that part wasn't so bad as walking back to shelter (a vehicle in this case) while your clothes are freezing to your body in the 20-degree weather.
 
wulfshrunting said:
Pack water socks so you can cross water and not have to wear buckets on your feet for the rest of the trip.
Click to expand...

Water socks? Please enlighten me :D

I usually go barefoot if it's nice out, and if it's raining, just say the hell with it and cross in my boots.
 
No matter how good your sense of direction, take a compass.

When I was around 9, my friend Jason and I went for an overnighter up a mountain. We lived next to some good ones and had spent no small amount of time hiking around them.That whole area was some serious "middle of nowhere" country. Most of the roads out there were still dirt and most of the wilderness was still relatively untouched. It was some outstanding hiking country, no trails or anything. All private land owned by surrounding families that had passed down through generations.

In that area of GA, there were some old mines, graphite if I remember correctly.They were proper old and well reclaimed back by nature. We used to like to hike up the mountains and explore them, looking for old tools, interesting trash, whatever we could find.

On this particular trip, it was just to camp out. We set out heading in the right direction and somehow overshot the mines. Thinking any second we would see them, we kept going and kept going. Now keep in mind, the mines were miles away from where we started out, so considering how long the trip was already going to be, it was easy to think we just hadn't gone far enough.

Well after a while, we figured out that we had drifted off course somehow and overshot the mines. We were at the top of a small set of mountains and set up camp and just made the best of it.

When we woke up, we hung around for a little while, heating up some bacon, biscuits and grits. After breakfast, we hiked around for a few hours with our .22's and did (what we called) hunting, which means blasting at everything we saw that had a tail.

Around noon or so, we decided to break camp and head back. Now there was one very serious problem. The sun was damn near straight up and we couldn't remember which direction we had come from. From the orientation of our tents, we figured roughly which way was correct, but we didn't know for sure. At this point, we figured well... somehow we gotta get back. We can't just stay out here. We picked what we thought was the correct direction and headed down the mountain.

After half the day of hiking back, we came out on a road. We followed the road to an intersection and checked the signs. The intersection we were at was a good 8 miles from home. Luckily Jason's grandmother happened to be heading hom from afternoon church and spotted us. She gave us a ride the rest of the way back.

Lesson learned. We had bummed around in those woods millions of times before and just knew that we knew every inch of them. We were more than confident that we could just head out and know exactly where we were going, because we had done it a hundred times before. No matter how well you think you know an area or how good you think you are, take a damn compass, mark your direction, do something. Now I have gotten a lot better at navigating without one since then, but I still carry one anyways, even when I'm in a familiar area. I'm at work and there's one in my rain jacket right now.
 
Don't let your 8 year old son carry your Realtree camo binoculars... It takes about 3 hours of backtracking to find them.
 
If you are hiking with other people and splitting the gear load, be sure that nothing is left behind. I recently did a day hike with the wife and she left our prepared trail lunch in the car:eek: Lucky I always pack a few Powerbars.
 
Great thread Rucker.
I learned one at the age of 12 (about 25 years ago) when my family started hiking the AT. We lived in Fort Myers, FL at the time and prepared to hike the AT that summer by doing hikes around FL.
We drive up to Mt Sumner? in mid May and begin hiking. It was my dad, mom, brother and me. We had all the maps and had out shelters planned out. Our first one we had to hit was 13 miles away if I remember right. Well we took our time, enjoying the scenery, being on the trail, and took longer than needed breaks.Then all of a sudden, a storm rolled in and started getting dark. Once the sun went down, it got cold and started to rain very hard. We couldnt see the trail anymore and couldnt risk going any further so we stopped and put our rain jackets on. We huddled on the side of that mountain all night and damned near all got hypothermia. We were all shivering uncontrollably.
When morning came, my dad went up the trail to find the shelter. He told my mom to yell out when she heard him as we were off the trail some.
Apparently, she fell asleep and woke up to hear his very faint calls from down the mountain. Turns out we were about 300 meters from the shelter and the top of the mountain.
Needless to say, we learned lots during that first night. I am still surprised to this day that we walked away from that.
 
let me see i went backpacking to the high sierra a few years back.. i got very sick so dicided to spend the next 3 days day hiking diffrent trails. well on the first day i took my camera and some water and started to walk. Figured out i would be out for 2-3 hours to take pics. So i started to walk and would stop every time to take a pic of this or that. looking at flowers and trees. Realy letting the nature sink in and enjoy my self. Next thing i know im looking at my watch and i been walking for 6 hours and i got no idea what so ever where im. That got me worried.. dicided to walk up a steep mountain to get a better view of where im just to find out there is no way to get to the top without ropes. I stoped my self looked around and figured out about what direction i must have started from and i knew there has to be a road out there. if i find the road then im safe. walked for more then 8 hours till i found the road. I used to walk much faster then i do now. I got to the road at after 9pm then followed the road for another 2 miles to the car. Lesson learned, Stop every once in awhile look back see where you came from, Dont just look back but make a mental note of how some rocks and trees look like. Look at each for a few moments to make sure you remember how they look. After all how many time you go on a trail thinking to your self " that tree look familer" just to find out it was a diffrent tree. It would help alot if you tell to your self out loud what you find diffrent in the tree or rock formation. We tent to remember better if we say it loud to our selfs. Always i mean ALWAYS if you feel your self get panicked stop dont keep hiking, dont even move in any direction. Calm down figure out where you are. Go over your choice and then act on it.

Sasha
 
If your wife is riding in the camper trailer and you stop for a bathroom break, be sure your wife is back in the trailer before you take off. It will save you being chased down by the Hiway Patrol.:foot::o And a few other choice remarks.
 
Some past mistakes I regret :

- overconfidence with vehicle in bush = stuck

- bringing jeans only

- no towel

- forgot Ist aid kit.

- mis-judging weather system

- forgetting to apply sunblock

- under-rated sleeping bag ( connected to mis-judging weather)

- forgetting axe

- no spare paddle for boat.

There's probably a few more I forgot.
It's been a long time since I screwed up; I'm usually pretty well organised and prepared , and always have a survival kit. :D

-
 
climbed mt. marcy last april... lessons learned, the ADK's are not a forgiving climate, always be prepared for winter weather and never assume a lean-to will be free... always bring a sleeping pad or be ready for a cold night on the snow covered ground
 
When younger I peak bagged a smaller mountain, summer 90 degrees, winds 30mph, drinking 2 liters water an hr. Sweating buckets and working hard.

By the time I summited 7 hrs later I was in mid stage hypothermia and severely dehydrated. I nearly became a statistic if it were not for my hiking partner.

Moral of the story: High tech wicking base layers can dehydrate you with a strong wind and cool your body off through evaporative cooling without you even realizing it.

Skam
 
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