Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

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retired jerry
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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by retired jerry » October 30th, 2017, 5:29 am

I would have walked back up to the trail and then out, except I wouldn't have gone in the first place because a storm was coming through,... :)

But it's easy to say from my computer, I don't want to dis the guy. Nice he talked about it publicly so we can all learn.

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drm
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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by drm » October 30th, 2017, 7:18 am

Although it is only natural for those of us who spend a lot of time on trails to wonder about the details in a case like this, it's best not to dwell on them too much. Other types of events could leave you in a similar situation. What if a rock from above fell on you and knocked you out for a bit. How disoriented would you be when you regained consciousness? We often evaluate how we would do in such situations by thinking of ourselves in peak shape and attitude. Think of yourself at 50% capability, physically and mentally, due to said rock fall or some other health event. Could you then make a decision that from the warmth of home seems unlikely? Would you be able to calm yourself in a panicky situation and slow down to give yourself time to think things through. Most of us have rarely if ever faced a life-threatening crisis, and those primal instincts can rage to the surface in ways we wouldn't expect. I think that there is no replacement for stopping, thinking, and taking some long, deep, and slow breaths.

pcg
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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by pcg » October 30th, 2017, 7:59 am

I concur with previous remarks, both wondering how this could happen and then realizing how it could. I often tell people that if they want to prepare for navigation in the wild, then they should prepare for worst-case conditions and do the following...

At nighttime set up a portable stereo in your bathroom with speakers facing the shower. Turn on some heavy metal with volume set to max (no earplugs allowed). Get dressed in all your hiking gear. Have a friend hide your map, compass, and flashlight in various places in your pack. Turn the shower on full blast on coldest setting. Put on your pack, turn out the lights, and step in. Now, for starters, find your map and align it to true north. Assume any GPS device is non-working, but if you want to take it out in the shower, go ahead.
Last edited by pcg on October 30th, 2017, 8:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

pcg
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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by pcg » October 30th, 2017, 8:09 am

markesc wrote:... Sounds like this guy did the 'hike dowhill til I hit a road' thing? Seems to me the odds of being found are much higher if you're on the trail...
So true. This old advice is almost always not good, as most hikers know. In the PNW you are likely to get cliffed-out, starve, or freeze to death while following a stream in any direction.

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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by squidvicious » October 30th, 2017, 2:07 pm

RobFromRedland wrote:Adrenaline does weird things to your thought processes
This, in big bold flashing red letters.

I also wouldn't put too much stock in the information drawn from the news accounts. I've seen differing stories, or even the same facts but in different timelines. Even what comes direct from the hiker gets put in the context of the reporter's interpretation, which changes the story. I know the weather got worse than he planned for, I know he took a wrong turn on the way out, and I know he fell and lost his gear. The exact timeline and other details are pretty hazy, but that seems bad enough, and not necessarily a situation you need to be an idiot to wind up in.

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BigBear
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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by BigBear » October 31st, 2017, 8:52 am

Understanding the severity of the "fall" this person took is probably key in evaluating the best course of action. I'm also confused over whether the fall was the result of retrieving the pack or the pack was lost as a result of the fall.

It would be unwise to leave a trail and go XC in hopes of finding a road, especially in a wilderness where there are no roads. Unless his fall left him with an obstacle between himself and the trail, the trail would have been the better destination after the fall instead of the unknown at the bottom of the ridge. (This is where the pre-hike research pays dividends - you would already know the lay of the land before arriving at the trailhead.)

In other lost hiker stories, the hiker or group of hikers had lost the path and chosen to continue into the forest in hopes of finding another trail. In those cases, it would be best to retrace your steps back to the trail. In case of snow, the steps are much easier to find. In case of heavy snow that is falling fast enough to cover your steps, you have to question your motives in continuing deeper into the woods in the first place. (Yes, there are some people with great route-finding skills that love the challenge, but we are talking about people with poor route-finding skills in this situation.)

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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by Aimless » October 31st, 2017, 10:17 am

I think that one thing about this story that seems to conform to what is typical when an experienced hiker gets seriously in trouble: it generally results from a series of small missteps and failures that compound over time, rather than one big obvious problem that changes everything in a moment. It's true that sometimes it is a sudden fall or injury, but more often than not it starts with poor planning or impulsive decisions, followed by unexpectedly difficult conditions, with a bit of bad luck thrown in, and by then you're in too deep to back out. :o

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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by chiefWright » October 31st, 2017, 2:27 pm

Seems like the consensus is folks often get themselves progressively lost thru a series of missteps and mistakes urged along by growing anxiety.
Regardless of the actual sequence and details, I there's a basic underlying cause in this situation. He got lost on the return when conditions were rapidly deteriorating. I suspect a homing instinct was kicking in hard, believing that the path he was on was leading him home long after a less anxious approach would have said "hey, wait a sec.."
To me, that's an important lesson. Keeping a mental backtrack is an important strategy for not getting lost. If you're on the return, backtracking is antithetical to the homing instinct, especially when conditions are dodgy.

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RobFromRedland
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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by RobFromRedland » October 31st, 2017, 5:36 pm

A related note - I was out hiking the Salmon Mountain trail (a very lightly used trail up to the old Salmon Mountain Lookout), and ran across a ribbon that the searchers put up:
LostHikerRibbon.jpg
It was kind of weird to see that, especially so soon after the search. At least we knew it had a happy ending!
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: WOW! What a ride! - Hunter S. Thompson

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Re: Missing Hiker in Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Found

Post by aiwetir » November 1st, 2017, 11:40 pm

Being lost is a state of mind. Being missing is completely different.

I work occasionally in wildlife biology and did a lot in the past. I once followed a clear timber sale flag line to the north and expected to hit a road soon. Well, I didn't. I pulled out my aerial photo and saw that going anywhere north of east or west would bring me to any road so I kept at it. After some time I realized that I should have hit any of those roads but I hadn't yet. I pulled out my compass and to my complete disbelief, I was going straight south, on the needle. It was so unbelievable that I kept going to make sure some lava deposit wasn't messing with my compass. It wasn't. It was the hardest thing to turn 180° around, but you have to trust your compass. Anyway we were using FRS radios to keep in touch and I reached for mine to let the guys I was working with know that I was going to be a couple more minutes. It was gone! At that point it was just one thing too much for my brain and I panicked and became immediate LOST.

That's all it takes. I was never more than probably 500 meters from any road, I had a map, compass, and aerial photo and started with a radio. This may have been before GPS was very useful. I could also have yelled and been heard, but the cascade of events pushed me into being lost.
- Michael

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