Why I got lost - a personal history of navigation errors
Another post about mountaineering, but this time I'm admitting some failures: times where I became what is sometimes referred to as "navigationally challenged".
This is a phrase used by mapreading types to avoid saying that they're lost. 'Lost' is a word that's bleak in an outdoor context. Lost is the thing where you can't work out which side of the map you should be looking at. Lost is when you realise you haven't been paying attention for an hour. In a mountaineering context, lost is when people call Mountain Rescue to get them off the hill.
And it's ok to call MR for help - that's what they're for. But in the UK at least, they're volunteers and I don't want to use them if I don't need to. An unexpected injury or medical emergency can happen to anyone - but having to navigate is not unexpected. If you're going out to the mountains, you will have to navigate. Do it enough, and you'll navigate wrong. The important thing is to spot that you have gone wrong and to fix it.
Therein lies the difference between being lost - the state where you can feel the panic rising and the hopelessness setting in - and navigationally challenged, where you're aware that you're off-course but comfortable that you will relocate and get yourself back safe.
So when have I gone wrong? Why did it happen? And what did I learn from that to prevent it happening again?
Maps alone won't stop you from getting lost, even if you have many types.
The first km
You've just parked the car, spot a footpath by the layby, and strike out, excited for a day in the hills... only to turn around two minutes later when you discover that you're in a dead-end field. The start of the day is a classic time to end up in the wrong place.
A typical start point - but is that path the one you want?
Why does this happen? Well, the enthusiasm is a part of it; you aren't thinking as clearly when you're rushing to get stuck into your fun day out, but another issue is the feature density at start points. Most car parks, mountain huts, and lift stations are the access point for many routes, leaving you more paths and junctions to deal with and a greater probability of choosing the wrong one. Maps can struggle to show all the details clearly when there are many paths, walls, and ditches in the areas near the road. If you're on open hillside being 10m offset is not an issue, but being 10m the wrong side of a ditch, fence, or railway line can involve a big backtrack.
Another cause is not yet being warmed up for navigation. Orienteers will know this feeling well - the first control of a race can be challenging because you're not yet in navigation mode. You set off still in a bit of a fug from driving, or the morning's coffee not yet kicked in, and blunder for a bit before your brain is in gear. While you're still getting your head around what's happening, you end up in the wrong place. Before you start, chat through the first section with someone in the group, both to share the responsibility and to get yourself into the navigation mindset.
In UK hillwalking and climbing, this first km error is often benign. One of my most public navigation errors was my first trip as a walk leader in my university mountaineering club. Having had to faff to wrangle my group together, check their kit, and get them out of the door, I powered off... through the wrong gate and 150m into a very damp field before I realised it was a dead end. This was followed by a backtrack in full view of the hut we'd just left, and much ribbing from fellow club members afterwards. The combination of being distracted by other tasks (mostly group management) and the high feature density around the hut led to me taking the wrong path and being somewhere other than where I had planned, but a few minutes' walking resolved the issue - a completely benign error.
A more dangerous version of this happened to me and some friends on our first Alpine climbing trip. We'd done two weeks of routes starting from lifts, and decided to use a hut to get an early start on the Arete de la Table. We arrived at the refuge with plenty of time the previous afternoon, and did a quick glance at where we thought we would access the glacier the next morning. However, when getting up just after 3am, in the dark, it was a lot harder to find a safe passage onto the glacier. We ended up losing time to the faff of avoiding crevasses and crossing streams in places we could have avoided if we had checked the terrain properly. We'd underestimated how tired we'd be after a poor night's sleep at altitude, and that tiredness and confusion made navigation extremely difficult.
The Glacier du Tour - after we'd figured out where we were...
While in both these cases the errors were remedied without outside help, the message is the same - spend time double-checking navigation early, even when it might seem trivial, because an early error can stack up fast.
The summit
Once you're on the hillside, navigation can become much easier - you follow obvious features like ridges or streams, and mostly you head uphill. Even in poor visibility, you can often make good progress towards the top by just going up.
Once you get to the summit, however, things get a lot more complicated. All the directions are downhill, and if you go wrong you'll end up in the wrong valley, a long walk from where you want to be. Summits will often be exposed to the worst weather too, so you might be in cloud, battered by the wind, or suddenly much colder than before, exactly when people want to stop for a photo or food.
Winter conditions on the summit of Ben Nevis - a tricky place to navigate.
Once you move off again, it's easy to be disoriented and start heading down the wrong way. This is the source of one of my nearest misses in the mountains. A small group of us had climbed Stob Ban using the North ridge, a pleasant Grade I winter climb in the conditions we had. Once we reached the summit, we kept well to the west, trying to stay clear of the cornice that we were concerned would be present on the east side. We began descending the rocky ridge on the other side in poor visibility, but after losing around 200m in height the expected saddle where we would turn north to head out of the coire didn't appear.
We gathered and checked the map, compass, and finally the GPS. Each told us the same - we had come down the south side of the mountain, rather than the east as intended. The only real was out was to climb all the way back up to the summit. Doing this was mentally very tough. It was windier now, and everyone was tired. Once we got to the summit, our mistake was clear - the expected cornice wasn't really there, but in trying to avoid it we'd not spotted the ridge we needed, and hadn't remembered to take a summit bearing to check the way off. Doing the extra time down and back up meant we were going to have to do at least some of the descent in the dark, increasing our risk of further errors. The added ascent and stress had a major impact on group morale, and upped the chance of mistakes even more. We made it down safely, but I'm still sure that we could have descended even further on the wrong side before realising. If we had, we may have needed to call for rescue from a remote valley, which would be a very poor end to a day.
The lesson here is one I repeat whenever I'm out. Always take a summit bearing. Even if you know the hill, even if the visibility is fine, take a bearing to make sure you're heading down the right way. It takes a few seconds, but can save hours. In difficult conditions, I often prepare the bearing before starting the final climb to the top, so that no time is wasted trying to wrangle a map and compass in high winds. This is probably the most important piece of navigation to do to avoid being truly lost.
The last km
You've taken the right descent route, but now you're back into the mess of features near the endpoint. Depending on your route you might be retracing your steps, making things easier, but if you're coming back another way there can be a high risk of some sort of error.
The last km shares a lot of traits with the first, but by this point you'll have been out for some hours. The temptation is to relax - you've got off the rocks, out of the wind, or below the snowline. However, the reality is there's every possibility of making a consequential navigation error all the way back to civilisation.
Forests can be very difficult navigation, exactly when you don't want it.
The Nantlle ridge is a classic grade 1 scramble in Snowdonia where this happened to me. After descending from the ridge, the way back entered a large commercial forestry plantation. Clear routes through were marked on the map, and large logging tracks were present on the ground, but the two didn't necessarily match up. This situation can feel like a maze, and there isn't a simple solution or trick for this: your best bet is often to take bearings, use GPS to make sure you're not going backwards, and choose paths that look like they take you the right way. The temptation to make a beeline through forests is often a bad instinct - progress through commercial forestry is slow and unpleasant - you'll end up tired and covered in sap. Patience and staying focused are key, especially when everyone is keen to get off the hill.
The lessons
Luckily none of my navigation errors have had bad outcomes, beyond doing some extra walking, but I hope I've learned from them. I think the most important lesson is to know your plan, and to keep cross-checking that route plan with what you can see on the ground. The more often you check that everything lines up with what you'd expect, the sooner you'll know if something doesn't.
The three areas I've talked about are a useful way to remember when you need to pay extra attention to nav, but they aren't exhaustive. Making sure you understand your route before you go will allow you to be aware of any potential tricky points and make a specific plan to deal with them. Talking this through with other members of your group puts more minds on the job, making it easier to catch errors.
There's a selection of my mistakes - it's certainly not exhaustive! Hopefully they'll be useful cautionary tales to help you go outside without becoming irredeemably lost.
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