Where am I? IF YOU GET LOST, SIT DOWN AND RELAX

BY ALLEN MACARTNEY

Lost in the Gatineau. It happened back in late fall on a day that started out as a fun map-and compass exercise to hone bushwhacking skills. Everything went well for three hours, and then the wheels fell off. Suddenly nothing – terrain, directional instinct versus compass reading, time – made sense to me or my son Craig. We were lost. Snow started falling, the cold and damp seeped into our bones, and night was approaching.

Panic is often right on cue at this stage, but for us it didn’t appear. We knew some things ahead of time. Here they are – learn them before you get lost, as you almost surely will if you’re a regular in the bush.

First off, expect your IQ to drop immediately by 30 per cent when you get lost. Your reasoning will log-jam, so this is no time to start calculating precisely where you went wrong, or trying to remember if you passed a trail two hours or 30 minutes ago. Instead, sit down, eat something and have a drink – hot if possible – to settle your anxiety. This kind of enforced control will usually restore your thinking enough to find a way out.

Throughout your hike

frequently. The Canadian Shield (covering much of eastern Canada) is rock, and rocks are often magnetized. When you’re depending on a compass to direct you in a straight line, magnetized rocks can spook it, sending you off your intended track. A GPS is no guaranteed help either. Mine had low batteries by late afternoon, creating an emotional pressure point to distort judgement.

Along the way, double your calculated travel distance. If your planned route looks as if it’s five kilometres on the map, you’ll probably walk up to 10 klicks. Swamps, beaver dams and cliffs will get in your way and force detours. So translate this extra distance into your time calculation.

angle. If you’re trying to reach a road or trail or hydro line, set your track so you hit it at a sharp angle (e.g. 90 degrees) not a shallow one. If you’ve plotted a shallow angle and the road has a nearby turn, you might miss it entirely.

variations for compass headings. If you don’t, you’ll drift off track. The magnetic field doesn’t hold still, so the difference between true north and magnetic north is constantly changing. Your map is frozen in time (its publication date), but it will tell you the annual variation so you’ll know to add or subtract that to get a true heading.

Keep going straight. It’s impossible to walk a straight line through the bush (remember those swamps?). So when you take a compass bearing, locate a distant tree or boulder in your direction of travel as a target. Then pick your way to it through the forest. Repeat the process, alternating from left to right of your successive minitargets, to average out the wobbles through the woods.

plan for it. Several months ago I got lost during a solo 1,300-kilometre wilderness canoe trip near the Arctic Circle. I accepted it with almost a shrug, honest. Reckless confidence? No, good prep. My pack had 10 day’s worth of food that could have been

stretched to a month. Spreading my map in the canoe I narrowed my likely position to a rough 230-square-kilometre area. Decades of outdoor experience and a pack full of food and supplies kept the butterflies at bay. Though still lost, I slept well that night. The next day I was back on track.

So how did my son and I find our way out? See above: We stopped, shared some chocolate from our packs, and joked about the pickle we were in. Food energy and banter cleared the log-jam in our thinking. We poked around and within minutes found a small trail – part of a network running off the main road. Had we pressed on we would have found it. Confidence renewed, we turned left down it, but it deadended on a lake. “Perfect!” my son said grinning and pointing at his map. “That puts us right here.” We backtracked up the trail and were soon standing on the main road.

So carry a survival pack with stuff you’ll need for an unexpected night out – matches, lighter and fire-starters, knife, whistle, large plastic bag and food – and use the 70 per cent remainder of your IQ. Learn from your experience and the experiences of others.

~ Allen Macartney has been lost three times – twice this year – in 40 years of wilderness travel.