You know, stereotypes are not always accurate…but…they save time and the exist for a reason. Part of me wants to say that this is a case of ‘academics’ who know their way around a college campus but have a total disconnect from the real world and it’s real world consequences.
INVERNESS, Calif. (AP) — An academic couple who got lost during a Valentine’s Day hike in the woods of Northern California was found Saturday by rescuers who spent almost a week looking for them and had given up hopes of finding them alive.
Carol Kiparsky, 77, and Ian Irwin, 72, were found in a densely forested area near Tomales Bay, a narrow inlet about 30 miles north of San Francisco, and were airlifted to a hospital for treatment of hypothermia, Marin County Sheriff’s Sgt. Brenton Schneider said at a news conference.
“This is a miracle,” he said.
They were unprepared for a long hike or the cold weather, when night temperatures dipped into the 30’s, and survived by drinking from a puddle, he said.
If you’re going to go for a ‘walk in the woods’, take a moment and think about how in the span of an eyeblink you can get a broken ankle, weather change, crazed transient, medical emergency, or other sudden unexpected event that turns your walk in the woods into a scene from The Revenant. The stuff that would make a huge difference in these situations fits in a tiny daypack and between your ears.
It’s easy to get lost on an unfamiliar trail. Or even a familiar one in fading light. When I still did such things, I always took a pre-packed daypack with a little food, water, foul weather gear and at least a couple of flashlights with extra batteries. Never had to use it…but being prepared is half the battle.
there are ~8 billion people on the planet now, we can afford to lose a few.
Jimbo:
Most people would agree the World would be a better place with SIX BILLION fewer people –
The hard part is getting groups to agree who should be spared…
And who kills the unwanted off.
Outlaw safety equipment on power equipment.
Repeal seat belt laws.
Bring back dueling.
Natural selection works out the rest in a generation.
A well known blogger has a picture of his friend’s vehicle with the sign reading “NO AIR BAGS – WE DIE LIKE MEN !!” I had to laugh at that one – Papa Hemingway would grin and nod at that one.
The opening explains a lot, “An Academic Couple”. Just because you may have a higher than average IQ, it does not mean you’re smart, quite often the complete opposite.
I have read a number of books about Einstein, and one of the tidbits of info inferred that he loved to go sailing, being enamored with how it all worked, but always had to take someone with him because more often than not he could not find his way back….. so just cause you’re smart, doesn’t mean you’re smart…….. “Smart” comes in many disguises……
It’s easy to get turned around, even in familiar territory.
Still the same, there’s NO excuse going in the woods unprepared.
Regardless of the trek…easy, moderate, or difficult.
Most know the drill…keep to it.
For those who don’t… learn !
Rarely, are there second chances.
Living in Phoenix years ago, a story on the news told about a group of hikers who got delayed by quite a bit on the trail. After their cell phones started to run out of power to be used as flashlights, someone was finally able to get enough cell phone reception to make a call and get the entire crew rescued.
The news reporters had this tidbit as a take-away from the story: So be sure to fully charge your phone before you go on hikes.
Can’t fix stupid….
Dependent upon technology is the single biggest mistake everyone makes…… Just cause it is full of all the whizz bang bells & whistles and does everything but take a dump for you, does not take the place of being able to use your head for what it was designed for. We have, so far, except for the older generations, lost what we need to survive, the ability to think, relying upon technology to do it all for us…… When the lights finally go out, all your heigh tech wizardry will not function and and will not save your sorry carcass…
I am amazed at how many people expect to use their phone as a flashlite. Their PRIMARY flashlight. Won’t even consider sticking a tiny light on their keychain, let alone a good one in their pocket.
Agree but also will point out many people would sooner leave their shoes at home then their phones. They carry those things like a religious relic.
I carry one of the smaller Olight itty bitty LEDs most of the time out of the house.
Couldn’t they have just built a fire and tried to get it to smoke a lot? Let rescuers see that? Or is that dumb?
What would you have them start the fire with?
Their vape thingies of course!
Darwin Award runner ups
Did the 21st century negate “the ten essentials” list? Technology is great, but it has its limitations.
Total Number of the Ten Essentials the couple possessed, between them: zero.
It’s only barely a positive thing they were found alive, being so egregiously stupid and all.
They should be happy the mountain lions in the area are apparently too well fed to do the obvious gene poll cleansing they had coming.
The newspaper headline should have been
“Darwinian Selection Thwarted Again.”
Some nitwits wanted to praise them for being so “savvy” and living on fern tips and drinking from a puddle.
One paid idiot on ABC national news even called Mr. Nitwit “something of a survivalist”.
(Lie: assumes facts not in evidence. Actual survivalists would have had a daypack with a veritable treasure trove inside, and the pair would have been found in about 6 hours, fat, warm, and happy.)
Actual smart people bring their own food and water, not to mention signaling devices, fire-making implements, and warm clothes and shelter. Oh, and such arcane implements as a map, compass, and flashlight. Y’know, for those utterly unexpected moments when the sun goes down, like it has for millennia, and it predictably gets…dark!
When I heard this story yesterday, I was screaming at the search and rescue drones on the TV set “Put them back! Mother Nature isn’t done with them yet!”
Hiked quite a bit in the area north of SF a couple of decades ago. Spectacular scenery on many poorly marked trails. Three hour hikes often turned into 5-6 hour hikes, needing a general map of the area and some spatial orientation skills to find our way back to the car. A couple of 70 year old urbanites could get into trouble in a hurry there. Saw many 70 year old experienced hikers out on those trails as well who knew the area like the back of their hand. It is deceptive because you feel so close to a huge metro area, but it can get desolate in a hurry. They were lucky to find a puddle. During the dry season they would have been toast.
Ouch… I got lost for several hours one morning in a 10k nature preserve next to my subdivision. I’m enough on the ball at least to be able to figure out N-S-E-W but I failed to reckon on the trail map being more complex than I thought it was. Went in for a 30 minute trail bike ride before work one morning but got turned around somewhere, and was way the hell somewhere else by the time I realized that.
Ended up having to ditch the bike at the jungle/water boundary at the edge of the swamp and went through knee deep mud/crap/swamp to get back into my neighborhood. Wearing only bike clothes and brought only 16 oz of Gatorade and a partially charged cell phone that died during the crawl out. Gave me just a taste of what being lost panic must be like.
A good cheap lesson, at least. I went back (with daypack, map etc) the next week and retrieved my bike, but I never go back in there or anyplace like it now without this stuff everyone’s talking about in the comments here. Even though it abuts the SE edge of my subdivision.
To present both sides, I did go for a short hike in Muir Woods Park one time, not too far from where this couple was ‘lost’. Surprisingly fast, the terrain goes from suburban landscape and paved roads to deep, dark woods in a thickly forested and steep sheltered valley. If in the area it’s worth a visit.
Looking at Google Maps of Inverness and Tomales Bay. Walk to the east, you hit water. Walk west, you get deeper and deeper in the woods as you gain elevation. Surely an academic knows the sun rises in the east. Walk east, and before you hit water, you hit Sir Francis Drake Blvd. If the cadaver dogs triggered on something only two miles from the cottage . . . did these people even look at a map?
A Washington State runner broke his ankle running on a trail with no cell service.
He crawled 10 and half hours (5-6 miles) until he could get to where his cell worked. More details below, link in nick, price of Spot 3 Satellite GPS Messenger beacon that works where cellphones don’t approximately $150.
“A Washington trail runner snapped his leg on a remote mountain path Friday evening and crawled for eight hours on his hands and knees, shredding his skin raw, until he found cell service to make a call for help, officials said.
The 26-year-old was alone on the Duckabush Trail in Olympic National Park in northwest Washington state when he suffered a broken ankle around 5 p.m., Jefferson Search and Rescue (JSAR) wrote on Facebook. He was about 10 miles from the trailhead.
The runner, later identified as Joseph Oldendorf, told KIRO-TV how his tibia had “completely snapped off,” leaving his ankle “flopping” after slipping on ice. From a hospital bed, Oldendorf recounted how he survived in the sub-freezing temperatures with no cell service and no one else around for miles.
“I had to crawl on all fours and my knees – it’s a rocky, snowy, dirty, wet trail – and after a while, my knees were just raw,” he said. “So I had the idea put my shoes over them so I would at least have some traction and a little bit of protection, but they’re still really messed up.””
Curious to know. Was there not one sizeable branch laying around to fashion a field expedient crutch? Of course the first question is: why no ice cleats when planning to run in a remote area in winter?
With a single stick – or even 2 sticks – you still need to do some balancing on the injured leg. He wasn’t able to do that because of the severity of the break. That’s something I know from experience. When I read the original article, I got the impression that he wasn’t running at the time, but hiking. Tho I could have gotten the wrong impression. I use cleats all winter on the farm – they’ve saved me a lot of grief & pain.
As a very young man. A group of my friends and I went out on a camp out in a very dense Forrest. I went into the woods to get firewood at about 1am. I got all turned around in the dark. I remembered something I heard in elementary school. The most dangerous Animal in the woods is “Man”. It was below freezing and I was not dressed for that kind of temperature. I kept my head. I remembered as I went into the woods, the moon was on my right. I reasoned that the moon should be on my left to return. It worked. I then built up the fire enough to see from the woods. You need to keep your head. My question is how do you keep from freezing by drinking water from puddle? I must have missed something.