Help that never came
Ouch. This is sad. The NY Times:
She was a 66-year-old woman who wandered off the Appalachian Trail in the thick Maine evergreen forest and waited for nearly a month for help that never came.
“When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry,” Geraldine Largay wrote in her black journal, about two weeks after she got lost and set up camp on high ground, as hikers are trained to do. “It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.”
Geraldine Largay at the Poplar Ridge Lean-to on the Appalachian Trail in Maine on July 22, 2013. This photo, taken by a hiker who crossed paths with Ms. Largay, is the last known image of her. CreditDottie Rust, via Maine Warden Service
They looked for her, but failed to find her.
Ms. Largay tried to text her husband to tell him she was lost. She got herself to high ground, perhaps hoping to be seen by an airborne searcher. And she kept a diary, in which she seemed to come to terms with the idea that she would not be found alive.
The file, which was first reported by The Boston Globe, is a detailed accounting of one of the biggest search operations in this state’s history that offers a glimpse of Ms. Largay’s monthlong fight for survival, and her calm preparation for the end. Rescuers have said they believe they came maddeningly close to Ms. Largay — perhaps as near as 100 yards — but, in Maine’s impermeable forests, even that distance might as well be miles away.
Sad sad sad.
I used to watch those Bear Grylls reality tv shows where he got dropped off somewhere remote with a knife and a camera crew, and used his survival training to get back to Notremoteland. I wish Geraldine Largay had made it out.
According to the case file, Ms. Largay knew she was lost the day before she was supposed to meet her husband. On July 22, she attempted to text him, but the message was never delivered, probably because of bad reception.
“In somm trouble,” read the message. “Got off trail to go to br. Now lost. Can u call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. Xox.”
The following day, she tried to text again.
“Lost since yesterday,” Ms. Largay wrote. “Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls. Xox.”
Her remains were found in October.
Be careful out there.
Written for another woman, group of women, who also died in the wilderness, doing what they loved, fully conscious of the risks they took —
Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev
by Adrienne Rich
http://words-end-here.livejournal.com/32513.html
That would be truly horrible. Fear, frustration and resignation. It’s surprising just how quickly forest/woodland can become disorienting and how hard it is to locate someone. I’ve had a couple of moments like that before in the South Island’s West Coast where leaving a track by even 50-100m can leave you with no landmarks and complete loss of orientation. Luckily our terrain there is some assistance in showing you which way to walk.
There was a light aircraft went missing decades ago over there. Witnesses saw it fly up a valley and the crash was heard. Despite repeated searches over many many years the wreck wasn’t found. Then one day a member of a search party returning from having another crack stepped off the track to sit down and rest – and sat on the wreck. Missed in the first search (no track back then) and covered in thick moss and fern by the time the track was put in. Literally hundreds of people had walked past within a couple of metres over the years.
I know nothing of hiking or wilderness survival, but my impulse would be to head downhill, on the theory that rivers reach the sea. And probably cross some roads along the way.
I don’t know about the Appalachian rail, but while that strategy would stand in good stead in some places, in others it would kill you (and I certainly know of instances of that).
There is no substitute for a top quality map, compass and training in how to use both, combined with dead reckoning skills. If you trust batteries a GPS (not a phone) and most certainly a 403MHz ELB are pretty much go to items these days. Especially for solo trampers. On a seldom used track you could fall and break an ankle or leg and die before another hiker comes along.
Please don’t think I’m victim blaming. I just wish people took the great outdoors more seriously. I nearly died from hypothermia in the mountains once in my youth and I’ll carry a decent amount of appropriate gear even on day walks for the rest of my life as a result.
Oh, and know where you are. Always. Never leave a track without marking your location on the map. If you think you are lost or uncertain of your position, mark a circle of uncertainty. Better yet. Ignore me and join a reputable Club that teaches good practice, survival in the local terrain and navigation!
QFT. I’m still haunted to this day by a similar incident. About 5 years ago, a family was on a camping trip and the father took his two boys for a early-afternoon hike. They were following a road back to their site and were offered (and declined) a ride from a local, who warned them of a nasty impending storm. Instead, it seems the father chose to beat the storm by cutting a straight path to camp, through the woods, rather than staying on the road. They missed the campsite, got lost, and, in a storm that dropped the temp from 65 to 25 F and poured freezing rain for 7 hours, wound up dying overnight.
What haunts me most is the ease with which I can be in the father’s head: the prideful turning down of a ride (“let it storm – we can handle a little rain!”), the confidence in sense of direction (“hey, let’s take a shortcut!”)… and then the horrific growing sense of just how serious – how deadly – the failure to respect nature was proving to be.
Yeah. I recently saw the movie Wild, and was so gripped by it that I read the book it was based on, by Cheryl Strayed. She took some scary chances – and nearly did herself in the time she got to a water tank hours after draining her last water bottle on a day of 100+ degree heat – and found it empty. [shudder]
I have a friend who was on a search team looking for this woman. They did all they could, but the Maine woods can swallow a person in moments, as they did in this terrible instance.
She apparently did not know how to use a compass and she left a GPS device in her motel room.
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/05/26/hiker-who-died-on-appalachian-trail-didnt-know-how-to-use-a-compass/
Argh.
I’m not going to pass any judgement on this poor woman. She was clearly doing something that she loved and made a mistake. That could describe any one of us, but most of us don’t pay this kind of price.
Instead, I’ll offer some information. I have been a hiker, backpacker, climber, and outdoorsman since I was a child. As an adult, I’ve taught classes on backcountry survival, especially in situations where you get lost (which is REALLY easy to do). I’ve also been a Mountain Rescue volunteer in the past, for many years (albeit not anymore).
To correct one thing in the article right away: SAR (search and rescue) people do NOT recommend that you move once you realize that you’re lost. Instead, the recommendation is to stay put. You don’t know where the high ground is if you’re in a thick forest, so don’t wander around looking for it. Stay close to where you last had contact or a fix on the trail. Dead reckoning almost always leads you astray; if you wander off, you’ll be leaving the search zone of the SAR teams that come looking for you. I can state, definitively, that SAR teams do not go looking in low-probability areas until we’ve exhausted the high-probability ones. If we think that you were hiking down Trail X, then we’re going to look closeby to that trail. We’re not going to extend the search two miles in each direction from that trail, at least not right away. Each meter away frrom the trail does far more than simply double the search area. As SAR people, we know that if we find you within 24 hours, then your chances of survival are the best. We’ll do everything we can to maximize that probability.
Some more useful ideas:
– ALWAYS bring the Ten Essentials with you on any hiking trip, and know how to use them. They can get you out of exactly this kind of situation.
– Take a course in compass use. Mountaineering clubs offer these all the time. They are everywhere. The Colorado Mountain Club is the one that I know well, but there are similar things all around the country. Just google for them. The courses are cheap, and valuable. Once you know how to use a compass and a map, you can get within a few feet of a target objective on the map, from miles away. I’ve done this so many times, and it still astonishes me how easy it is.
– Remember simple facts. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. If you know basically which direction from which you left a known waypoint, you can use these facts to get you back.
– Learn about local flora and fauna, if possible. Lots of things are good to eat, out in the wild. Perhaps disgusting, but better than dying.
– Last but not least: if you’re not experienced, or don’t have the skills above, do not ever go out in the backcountry alone.
I will add: do not rely upon GPS. It needs batteries, and those can run out, and it needs signals from the satellites, and those can be blocked. If you are going to hike in the back country, learn to use a compass and map.
*sigh* How terribly sad. And I agree with everyone else, without blaming this woman at all or suggesting she’s responsible for what happens to her, anyone hiking in rough areas where trails can be lost should be very, very skilled with an old fashioned compass and map.
This kind of thing even happens in Britain where our wild areas are pretty damned tame (and small) and our weather friendly compared to the US. Nature is meaner than a lot of us 21st Century people understand.
[…] Originally a comment by MrFancyPants on Help that never came. […]
It’s equally sad regardless of whether she was prepared.
It’s worth noting that at least some of Bear Grylls’ shows have been widely criticised for being very far from reality indeed in that the exciting bits are staged set-pieces and that he sleeps in hotels at night instead of in whatever shelter he builds.
I’ve no idea whether any of this is true, I’m just reporting that these criticisms have been widely made.
What I can vouch for as fact is that he peddles a range of ‘survival gear’ that’s complete tat.