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-andcompass 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
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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 check your compass heading 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. Meet your target goal at a sharp 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. Factor in regional magnetic 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. Accept the idea of disaster and 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 www.ottawaoutdoors.ca
