Lost With Gps !!!!!!!

[+Cave Troll and Eeyore]

Have you seen this news alert on geocaching ?

[+MarcB]

Oh dear!

Hope everyone is alright - remember folks, before you go caching learn how to use a GPS.

MarcB

[+CuplaKiwis]

Serious Stuff. Even with disclaimers etc, you've got to wonder what the long term implications of this kind of thing are for Groundspeak and Geocaching as a whole.

 

Thank goodness they got to them in time...

[+Birders]

The words "complete prats" spring immediately to mind.

[+The Hungry Caterpillars]

What can you say-this kind of thing happens all the time in this country also. In the Lake District we have come across 3 DofE groups totally lost in dry weather with good visibility with maps and compasses but nobody competent in their use. The last group we came across were in the dales and were lost again for the second time in 2 days. The day before the highlight for this group was the lift they got from the mountain rescue!!Another group had the largest ruksacks that you can buy but when they finally camped we realised that the majority of the weight consisted of hair products and hair drying appliances.And the footware !!Aargh

[+DomHeknows]

footwear being highheels?

 

I saw the original post in my inbox this morning and it does make you wonder what sort of prats they were....having said that - how many of us have got "lost" in woods or lost their signal in the woods?

[60North]

Getting lost is not the crime!

 

The crime is not being prepared for it.

 

Spoken by the man who always carries 2 GPS units, a banana, mars bar and a couple of bottles of water, waterproof trousers, hat gloves, mobile phone, binoculars, Leatherman, plus extra penknife, whistle, torch etc. etc. ... and this is just for the walk to work!!

[+WxGuesser]

priceless.... or darwin awards?

[+Pharisee]

Last year, after a splendid Second Annual Scottish Cache Bash I spent a very enjoyable morning climbing up to the now archived 'another failed climbing stash' which was located under a towering cliff at Coire an Lochain, some 3000 feet up in the Cairngorm Mountains. At that time of the year there was still a fair bit of snow on the ground. It wasn't a difficult hike but the ground was pretty rugged and in places very boggy with the melt water coming off the snow fields. On my return journey I was stopped by a group of Asians, about eight adults and half a dozen or so children between, I guess 8 and 12 years old. They had just rounded a bend and could see the snow in the distance. The kids were obviously excited and one of the gents asked me if it was possible to walk up to the snow. I told them that yes, it was but they would be well advised not to try it. The ladies were wearing saris with open sandals and none of the men or kids were wearing more than a just a shirt and trousers. There was no sign of any maps, food, water or the like. I pointed out the sign that we were standing by but they chose to ignore anything I said and set off up the path. I have no idea if they reached the snow but I suspect they didn't.

[+sTeamTraen]

The summer before last I went skiing in July (!) on the Italian-Swiss border (Cervinia). Each morning (early - the snow gets slushy pretty quick under the sun) we took the cable cars from 1800m up to about 3300m. You have to take your passport in case the Swiss stop you as you step out at the top. It's all quite cool.

 

One day, our guide took us up some more lifts so that we ended up at 3600m, at the top of the cable car which comes up from Zermatt. We were amazed to see a bunch of American college-age kids walking around in shorts and flip-flops in the snow! OK, it wasn't very cold, maybe 5-6ºC, but the snow was its customary zero degrees... these kids thought it was all "cool" and "like, wow", of course. Our guide suggested that we should go to Malibu and lie on the beach in ski suits...

 

Incidentally, skiing in summer is cheap - maybe because you can only get a half-day on the pistes at a time. We stayed at Club Med which is normally quite pricey. For this summer you can get a week with full board, lift passes and lessons included (but not ski hire) for about 350-400 GBP. OK, you have to get there (maybe Ryanair flies to Turin, not sure), but it's a bargain. And there's at least one cache on the Matterhorn which you can walk to !

Edited January 18, 2005 by sTeamTraen

[+klaus23]

I would hesitate to call them complete prats, it's much easier to get lost in woodland than anywhere else. Maps and GPS units may be useless, as there are neither visual waypoints and there might not be a GPS signal.

 

Mountains however are a different story. I've seen some crazy things while climbing:

 

Carrauntohill (weather: moderate)

 

- The English Stag party who climbed up in jeans, trainers and t-shirts nursing hangovers, with no food or water, but with a can of beer each for the summit.

 

- The parents wearing clothes better suited to the high street encouraging their similarly attired 4-year old to keep going up the mountain.

 

Slieve Donard (weather: Blizzard)

 

- The two women on their way down from the summit, wearing tracksuit bottoms and windcheaters, and no backpacks containing food or water.

 

Snowdon:

 

- The again, badly attired group of walkers who had at least 4 pints each in the summit cafe before heading back down the scree slope to the Miners Track.

 

And don't get me wrong - attire must not mean state of the art gore tex, but should at least include waterproofs, an extra layer and thermals. And don't get me started about footwear. A good set of boots is probably the most important thing you can have.

 

As for maps, I dare say most people never bring one. Or can't read it. Or rely on GPS navigation.

 

On Dec 31st I was up on Benbulbin at the Skylark cache. The weather was misty and visibility was down to 50ft. The top of the mountain is a plateau and there are no features you can use for navigation, add to that the cliffs on three sides. When we left the cache we tried to navigate without maps or GPS to see what would happen. We ended up going around in circles.

 

You always need both methods of navigation - map/compass and GPS.

 

Donnacha, who has friends in the Wicklow Mountain Rescue will tell you that at least 80%-90% of their call-outs are directly due to lack of equipment or navigational error. It's a telling statistic that the vast minority of their calls are to aid climbers/walkers who are in genuine difficulty due to broken legs or falls.

[+sTeamTraen]

I re-read the story from New Jersey in the light of the article which the local rag did about me last week. This involved me talking to the journalist for an hour and a quarter while I retraced my steps on a cache which I'd already found. During that time he had plenty of time to ask me his questions, and I made sure that in several cases he wrote down exactly what I wanted to say... and there were still four or five errors in the article.

 

So, given that this is a breathless "man bites dog" shock-horror report, I think we should all bear in mind that at least one, and probably half a dozen, of the salient points in the article, may well be wrong.

 

For example:

- Maybe they weren't geocaching

- Maybe they knew how to use the GPS but they dropped it, or the batteries went dead

- Maybe there was only one counselor, or four, and there could well have been two, or six, teenage girls, or boys

- Maybe nobody had a clinical diagnosis of hypothermia

 

Etc, etc, etc. See any episode of Chris Morris' "Brass Eye" ("There's no evidence, but it is proven scientific fact") for more ideas...

[NickPick]

Well, I think that we should all give up this obviously dangerous and foolish hobby. And as for it involving an 'internet', that should have been the first warning.

[+Alibags]

It's a telling statistic that the vast minority of their calls are to aid climbers/walkers who are in genuine difficulty due to broken legs or falls.

sorry to be pedantic, but can one have a 'vast minority'?

 

Apart from that, agree with everything you say. I have seen families with baby buggies and nothing more than their everyday wear, strolling to the top of Helvellyn like a walk to the local park.

 

The climbing club I was in was full of medical students, and one winter weekend in the lakes, we spent an entire day providing mountain rescue and (for the fourth year students) medical help to a bunch of nutters who had fallen through the cornice and slid down a gulley, sustaining various broken bones amongst them, because they had not taken any sensible precautions.

 

Mind you, the stupidest thing I ever saw was an acquaintance of mine who decided to play with fireworks, whilst a group of us were walking up Mam Tor in Derbyshire. To cut a very long story short, he blew the tip of his finger off plus mangled his hand and was eventually stretchered off by Buxton Mountain Rescue (marvellous chaps).

 

No, geocachers do not have the monopoly on stupidity.... mind you there are at least two local caches I know of (one temporarily archived) where people tend to fling themselves with wild abandon down a very steep slope in persuit of the arrow, rather than walk round and go down the sensible path! You know who you are!

[davester]

Hmmmmm. Must get round to reading my GPS manual sometime.

 

[+klaus23]

It's a telling statistic that the vast minority of their calls are to aid climbers/walkers who are in genuine difficulty due to broken legs or falls.

sorry to be pedantic, but can one have a 'vast minority'?

Possibly. But you know what I mean...

 

Apologies - it was late!

[+Chris n Maria]

OK heres a confesion:

 

I have done a fair amount of walking in the UK and am always carefull to take the relevant kit, including map and compass. But it all went wrong the first time we tried to use a GPS in anger (we hadnt even heard of caching then).

 

We were in the the Lot valley in France, it was hot dadgum hot so being english we went out for a walk. We had a guide book and it was all going swimmingly as we trecked up the hill. We reached a forest and this was were the problems happened, the instruction in the guide was "take the second path on the right". None of the paths had marker posts and how wide a path were we looking for did a narrow track count? or was it more of a fire road we were looking for? What about that new track that looks like it has just been bulldozed through the forest - does that count?

Needless to say we were now lost.

 

At this point Maria said "why don't you try your GPS" - so we switched on, waited ages for a lock and then discovered ....our exact coordinates. So if we ever needed to get really lost we new exactly where to come

Eventually with dead reconing and using the mapping feature of the GPS we managed to find our way back on to route.

 

So sometimes it can be quite easy to get lost.

Chris

[+kevin308]

Maybe the girls that got lost had their GPS set to spanish. LOL.

 

Well its not that funny. Its a good idea to have your gps track your rute even if your not in a large forest. If I go to a place in london I have never been to I get my GPS to track my footsteps.

[+Pharisee]

No, geocachers do not have the monopoly on stupidity.... mind you there are at least two local caches I know of (one temporarily archived) where people tend to fling themselves with wild abandon down a very steep slope in persuit of the arrow, rather than walk round and go down the sensible path! You know who you are!

Touché......

[+Alibags]

Oooh, I didn't actually mean you... so got any confessions to share with us Pharisee?

[+Pharisee]

Oooh, I didn't actually mean you... so got any confessions to share with us Pharisee?

Mmmm... I think we both know who you were refering to

 

I just wondered if you were getting a bit of your 'own back' on the cache setter for this posting I made a while back.

[+marinor]

I am really glad that I read the forum posts before doing our first cache, the one point we picked up real quick, waypoint your car before walking away from it....

 

stay safe

Bill

[+Latitude 26]

It's a good thing that they at least knew how to operate their cell phone!!

 

LOL...

 

 

"Bassmedic"

[+sTeamTraen]

It's a good thing that they at least knew how to operate their cell phone!!

Perhaps they had it mixed up with the GPS and they were only rescued because the cache was at a coordinate with 911 in it. Or maybe they had to feign being lost to avoid being charged with making a prank call (on their GPS)

[+Alibags]

I just wondered if you were getting a bit of your 'own back' on the cache setter ....

no actually, both of the logs/caches I am thinking of were set by somebody else. I must go and read up on your caches now though and see what I can find.

[+Teasel]

and was eventually stretchered off by Buxton Mountain Rescue (marvellous chaps).

Donations should be sent to...

 

Wicklow Mountain Rescue will tell you that at least 80%-90% of their call-outs are directly due to lack of equipment or navigational error

I guess it depends on the area. Certainly that's not representative of Peak District Callouts, despite having Britain's largest area of upland moors (whatever that actually means!). In fact, out of several dozen callouts which I have attended, only three come to mind where I've thought to myself "they shouldn't have tried to do that".

 

There can't be many experienced walkers who haven't at some point done something a bit silly, or bitten off more than they could chew. And, however well trained you are, and however much equipment and experience you carry with you, accidents still happen -- as Moss Trooper can attest!

 

Day noted that the girl was wet, could barely move and the Coast Guard had to get her into dry clothes before transport to prevent further complications.

Which is just a dramatic way of saying "she had mild hypothermia, so they put her in dry clothes and took her somewhere warm"! If she had been suffering from severe hypothermia, they would not have removed her wet clothes.

Edited January 19, 2005 by Teasel

[+kevin308]

I am really glad that I read the forum posts before doing our first cache, the one point we picked up real quick, waypoint your car before walking away from it....

 

stay safe

Bill

I wish I had a car to drop a waypoint next to.

 

It's just not the same when you waypoint the closest tube station.

[+rutson]

Interesting stats for the peak district especially:

 

Equal (pretty much) age distribution, maybe a slightly disproportionate 60-69 compared to users?

 

No Geocaching listed in the activities (phew!) thought grazing is!

 

And the one that really bothers me! 1 in 30 'not founds'!

[+kevin308]

I will now sleep better at nights knowing the Buxton Mountain Rescue Team save sheep!!!! I would die if I lost Wooly my stuffed sheep from the Woolworths ad's.