Thought it might be interesting to hear some tales from others who have unintentionally spent a night out in the woods because of a SNAFU or such.



I'll start it off with a short article I did several years ago for a column of mine. -TONY



ONE-DOG NIGHT



During the 45 years I've spent traipsing about Arizona's great outdoors, I've had many good and only a handful of bad experiences.



One experience I never had was getting lost, however. Oh, I had times when I was slightly "turned around," but none where I had absolutely no clue as to my location. Consequently, I've had never spent a night away from my main camp unless it was intentional -- with at least a basic supply of necessities. Like most of us probably do, though, I frequently wondered how I'd handle it.



My late grandfather indoctrinated me early about the perils of being unprepared if it becomes necessary to spend the night away from camp. So I committed myself to carrying matches, an extra candy bar or two and water in areas where it is scarce. Under the right circumstances a person can live many days without food or water other than in the hot desert. So the candy and water were simply feel-good conveniences. But the matches seemed the most important to me.



We often read stories about people getting lost and dying. These accounts continually upset me, especially when the victim had spent only a night or two in the woods. I always wondered how someone becomes a casualty in such a short time. Yet it happens too many times every year.



Most folks who get lost die of hypothermia, the medical term for exposure. Characterized by a rapid lowering of one's body temperature and uncontrollable shivering, it soon causes disorientation and a loss of energy. Death is the final consequence. Hypothermia frequently follows panic, a common occurrence when a person becomes lost. Of course, it's very disheartening because the tragedy can be avoided if a person keeps his head on straight.



About five years ago on a lion hunt with Joe Mitchell in the Mazatzal Wilderness Area near Rye, I finally found out what's it like to spend a night in the wilderness alone without any food, water or equipment.



Luckily, I knew where I was all the time. But my camera gear, a .357 handgun, matches, a candy bar and a light rain jacket made up my meager supplies. About the only panic I had came with the realization of having only three cigarettes. I knew I had to ration them to make it through the night and part of the next morning.



Mitchell and I had cut a hot track early that morning and stayed on it for six hours. Eventually, that track crossed another set. The dogs, confused by the second track, split into two groups. So I trailed one bunch, while the guide followed the other. At sunset, my group of dogs was nowhere to be seen. I dropped off the ridge into the canyon where Mitchell had been about an hour earlier. He was gone, too.



Realizing it was at least a five-hour walk to camp and thinking I could make it before midnight, I stumbled through the darkness along the meandering trail. It was a bad decision.



I lost the trail three different times when it crossed the stream bed, got smacked in the face by an unseen branch and had more than one prickly pear cactus deposit its spines in my shins. I decided hiking in the dark without any moonlight was not my thing.



Thoughts flowed readily, but panic was not one of them. Instead, everything I had read or been taught about this kind of situation came to mind.



I began looking for a protected place on the trail with enough nearby firewood to get me through the night. Such a place existed only a few yards up the trail. A downed tree, though rotten and a bit damp, offered plenty of firewood, and the glow from my cigarette lighter revealed enough dry kindling nearby to sustain the wet wood. After building a fire ring out of rocks on some level ground, I gathered enough small wood to get a blaze started, broke the rotten log into smaller pieces and stacked them outside the fire ring. As the pieces dried, I would have a continuous supply of larger chunks for the fire.



The warmth from the flames quickly countered the chill from the March evening. Hungry and weary from hiking around the up-&-down wilderness all day, I ate half of my candy bar and saved the rest for breakfast. I then cleared a "bed" next to the fire within easy reach of the drying wood. With my rolled up daypack tucked beneath my head, I snuggled up beside the now blazing fire.



A few minutes later, a noise that sounded like something walking through dry leaves came from the blackness. Just as I reached for my handgun, one of Mitchell's hounds wandered into the light of the fire, and I let out a sigh of relief.



"Here, Jake," I called.



The hound moved warily toward me, then stopped 10 feet away and settled down on a bed of fallen leaves.



"Suit yourself," I said, thinking it was nice to have company anyway.



I tried sleeping again, but worried about Joe and what he would think. No doubt he might imagine the worst. Just then, the sound of rustling leaves made me look over my shoulder.



Jake, with head lowered, cautiously crept to where I lay, circled once and then lowered himself to the ground and pushed up against my back. Providing a bit of body heat for each other, my canine buddy and I went to sleep.



Over the next 11 or 12 hours, I woke often to rekindle the flames with a fresh supply of the dead tree. And each time, I lay back down, Jake wiggled his body close to mine.



The next morning, Jake and I set off for the main road, and as we negotiated to the top of the ridge, I quickly realized my decision to not hike the steep trail in the dark was a smart one. Each time the path meandered across the stream, the dog would stop on the other side and wait for me to catch up. It was almost as if he wanted to be sure I didn't miss the turns.



Five hours later, we topped the ridge and found the road. I immediately heard the whine of an ATV coming toward us. As the three-wheeler came around a bend, the driver spotted me and stopped.



"Are you Tony?" he asked.



"Yes."



He then told me he was Mitchell�s dad and had arrived the previous night. "Joe called me and said you might be lost. He drove down to Rye this morning because he thought you might come out that way. Did you have a bad night?



"Well, I could use a cigarette and a sandwich. But other than that, I'm fine. I spent the night with a warm fire in front of me and a warm dog behind me."



The man smiled. "Oh, you had a one-dog night, huh?"

Back in the 1970's I was hunting in the vicinity of Taos, NM for bear. Early October, as I recall. I'd been a country boy and an outdoorsman all my life and never been lost.

I parked my pickup about noon and set out for a pond on my map about a mile away. Finally got to the pond and hunted back toward my pickup. I could see the landmarks I'd picked out before setting out, but couldn't find the pickup. It just wasn't there. Or anywhere.

Finally, dark was coming on and I had a choice to make. A fire was out of the question because of all the deadfall everywhere. And I was getting powerfully thirsty. Decision time.

I decided to hike down toward the main forest road in the bottom of the canyon, where there was good water. Along the way I found a stream, brushed the cow turds out of the way and drank for the first time in 7 or 8 hours.

When I finally bottomed out, I was pretty tired. I cut some boughs for a bed with my hunting knife the way the old timers were supposed to have done. I lay down to rest, but couldn't sleep because the wool shirt and jeans I had on wasn't enough to keep me warm when I was still.

Finally, I got up and started up the road to the top. That kept me warm enough, but I was really weary. Good moonlight helped, expect in the shadows of the mountain or trees. I had to be really careful there where I put my feet then.

At some point an animal apparently came to look at me on a ledge above. Rocks and dirt rolled down from where it stood. I pointed by '06 in that direction and yelled, "Git outta here!" I suppose it did. I would have liked to have known what it was, but I never will. Probably a deer.

I staggered back up to my pickup at about 2 or 3 am, so it wasn't a complete night out, but it came pretty close.

Food tasted pretty good, but once I lay down, I had a hard time going to sleep. Guess I was too tired.

For years after that I wouldn't even get out of my pickup to take a leak in an unfamiliar area without a basic "survival pack" with matches, light, cup for drinking, and a few other essentials. It was such a miserable exeprience I didn't want to take a chance on being really lost.

Well Tony, my night didn't go so well. I was only 18 years old, and working for some timber companies killing/controlling beaver problems. I had grown up and spent my whole short life in hill country. But this was swampy flat land. Everything went well until one of those cloudy snowy days. Of course I had no compass, or survival gear. I got turned around on a very large tract of land just before dark. I was wearing hip boots and carrying a shotgun. As I was working, I didn't have on a heavy coat, just a light jacket, no survival gear, and nothing to build a fire with. The snow was about 8 inches deep and all the swamps were frozen solid with a low temperature around 10 degrees. The night was almost completely dark, as there was no moon or stars showing thru the clouds. I could occassionaly see a few feet because of the glow off of the open areas of snow. My answer to the problem was to keep moving, all be it at a very slow pace. The highlites of the ordeal came as I crossed several moving streams of water. The still water was frozen solid, and the beavers were swimming in the streams. On a couple of occassions, I had beaver swim very close to me, and then "Pop" their tails against the water in a shotgun blast of sound. I think that they first believed me to be another beaver, and then when they realized I was a human, they popped their tails as a warning signal to others, or a threat to me.

My answer worked. I didn't freeze to death, and I came out on a road some 8 miles from my truck the next morning. It was a real education or me. I now always carry a pack with everything I need to get me thru another night such as this.

I do pack my things a little differently for stays in the dry areas of New Mexico and Arizona. But, at 18 years old and no clue as to how to cope with such an ordeal, I thank God that I didn't slip and fall in those moving streams that night.



/

great posts.

I've spent a few unplanned nights out in the wild as well. Amazing the things one thinks about when we realize how small we really are in all of God's creation.

I didn't spend the night but had a near miss in 2001. Was deer hunting in northern Maine and lost track of how far I've gone, so went over the wrong saddle of a ridge. I was headed in the right direction to the road & truck, but ran out of daylight.

I remembered the old line from SCUBA class -- "Stop, breathe, think, act" -- found an area sheltered with some pines and started trying to build a fire. Unfortunately this was a north-facing hillside, so everything was wet. It took me a couple hours to get a good fire going, with no shortage of equipment -- I even burned all the receipts in my wallet (except the ones I hadn't been reimbursed for yet -- I wasn't that desperate).

The payoff was a few hours later, when after an exchange of signal shots and some shouting, my buddy walked up to the fire and said, "Well s***, if I'd known you were this comfortable I would've gone home and gone to sleep."

John

I've not had the misfortune of an unplanned night in the woods. I did have a near miss when I was 16 years old that really stuck in my head!

My father and I had left town after he had gotten off work and driven to our hunting area. It got dark before we actually even got close, and things look much different in the dark.
When Dad pulled off the main road and started up in the direction of the peak it was just visible in the moonlight. He found a wide spot and pulled off. We threw the sleeping bags on the ground and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up it was starting to get light already. I hurried up with stuffing pockets with jerky, and granola bars and took off. I had looked at my compass but other than knowing which direction I was heading it wasn't a big issue.
I had hunted all morning up on the mountain, crossed a canyon and started working my way down. We had agreed to meet back at the truck about 1pm. I missed the truck! I came down from the mountain and crossed the same road I crossed on the way up, or so I thought. I walked out to the main road eventually and recognized where I was at. Just about dark Dad came up the road in the truck. He was a little scared for me, I was pretty thirsty.
I had seen close to thirty deer and he'd only seen a few. To this day I don't know how I missed seeing the truck, I do know the map I had didn't reflect all the roads in the area and it really was confusing. I was always careful from then on to use the map and compass properly in unfamiliar places, and have avoided the "lonely feeling" ever since.
I also carry a fanny pack just about always now, even when I am in an area I'm familiar with. Things happen.
Dad had saw fit to photocopy a section of a fire map of the area we were to hunt. He had given one to me to carry.

I've spent a number of times out without *really* planning on it...But I wasn't certain I would be back to main camp that night, so I was ready, and spent reasonably comfy nights out, even though I had no sleeping bag or formal shelter..

One of the few times I really got stuck was when I went out for a day hunt.

I left my truck and headed up the mountain. I spent most of eh time glassing and kept moving. I saw a number of deer, but none I would put a stalk onto.

I was thinking about heading back when I encountered a couple of grouse..."Not all is lost, I guess.." I thought as I popped thier heads off with my .270.

It was time to head back..but I had waited too long.

By the light of my headlamp, I headed down (int he pitch black) what I thought to be the right trail. Soon enough, I decided that it was stupid to continue.

I built a fire, gathered wood for the night, set up a makeshift shelter and roasted the two grouse, washing it down with water and a candy bar.

It wasn't ideal, but keeping the fire burning hot every few hours, I had a fine, but comfortable night.

the next day I realized that had I continued on my course, I would have ended down a drainage nowhere near the truck.

It is not difficult to stay out a few nights if you have a mimimum of gear and a little common sense.

Not all night, but a close call...

Colbran, Colorado - around 1990:

Johnny and I were using the 4-wheeler to pack our gear from the truck, up to our little campsite higher on the mountain, away from the crowds. (We were sharing the use of my little Suzuki 185. How's that for serious planning?)

I left Johnny up at camp with the tent in the afternoon while I made one more trip to the truck with the ATV. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the air was warm. Obviously no need to take my daypack with my survival gear.
(The seeds for adventure have now been planted, watered, and fertilized.)

By the time I got down the mountain to the truck, something seemed different. The sky was growing dark, the wind began to blow, and serious clouds were moving in. I had the frame packs with sleeping bags on this last trip, so I needed to get to Johnny.

I put on a cotton camo longsleeve shirt over my short sleeve shirt, tied everything on the rack and hit the throttle. Only about 10 minutes into the 30-minute trip, the rain began pouring.

Thunder and lightning and rain. Oh my.

Very quickly I was completely soaked, and the temperature was droppping drastically. I finally reached the bottom of a long steep climb that had been a struggle for the little quad-bike even when it was dry. Now it was running with water, and was covered with little slippery flat rocks!

Also, it was almost totally dark. Fortunately, I had a flashlight up at the tent with my survival gear.

I had no choice but to aim the front wheels uphill, and hit it full speed. I almost made it.

The wheels began to spin, and then progress came to a halt. As it began to coast backwards, I panicked and hit the rear brake. I never said I was smart.

The ATV stood up and threw me off over the back rack. The rack kept it from coming completely over, and it dropped back on all fours and began running backwards down the mountain.

Note above, that there happened to be someone lying on his back in the mud directly below said vehicle.

I rolled quickly to the side as the ATV rolled by, ran off the trail, and high-centered on a big log.

I unleashed the packs and threw them on my back and started slipping and sliding up the mountain.

Halfway to the camp, there were a couple of hunters on their way down the mountain on big, 4wd ATV's. With rain gear on, of all things.

Sissies.

They asked me if I needed help, but I was only about 200 yards from the tent by then. They seemed a little surprised at seeing a guy climbing the mountain at night in a thunderstorm, soaked to the bone in a cotton shirt, without a flashlight, carrying two frame packs. I don't know why.

I finally made it to the tent, where I found a REALLY surprised guy. I hurriedly stripped and jumped into the sleeping bag, shivering so much I couldn't talk. The whole ordeal triggered an attack of altitude sickness, and I spent the next 24 hours in the sleeping bag. I couldn't even eat a meal.

Johnny was able to get somebody to help him get the ATV off the log and get it back to camp.

And the hunt hadn't even started yet!

Rick.

Here's one from an elk hunt back in 98,

Just a stretch of the legs.

Lubbock TX, 1993. I was working on depleting this bar's supply of Jack Daniels when she walked in. You know it is bad when you have to close one eye to determine the trophy quality of your prey.

I mis-judged the trophy quality on this one. I didn't make it home for days.

I would have rather spent the night alone in the mountains.