The Magic Bus Strikes again (dangerous, estimate, health)

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by Jerseykat

O.k. wait let met get this straight..there is a road?
Don't know why but imagined this bus somehow out off the road system.
I know it makes no sense but I just never pictured a road.
How the heck does one get lost on a road?

From the air you can clearly see the road, on the ground it looks more like a fourwheeler trail. It has been getting overgrown for some 60+- years since they were gold mining in that area, but very easy to follow on foot.... Well for
most of the locals anyway.

If you google it, you may be able to see what I do when I fly over it.... Just a bit farther away...

[Jerseykat]

Well the "lost" obviously came in off this trail/road they should (big expectations here) be able to
get back out on the same trail.
If they get "lost"...well don't waste time or resources trying to find the stupid.
Cause obviously they do it over and over again.

[JavaPhil]

Cut blazes, stack rocks, scuff arrows into the dirt. Anything!!!

They don't call it wilderness for nothing.

[starlite9]

You're in a stupid mountain valley, that alone is one of the best ways to keep track of where you are... The idiots never look up to see the landmarks...

[JohnPF]

Well it has been proven that lost people do walk in circles! In the test they used Sahara on a cloudy days, but I guess the same applies to inexperienced people to whom "wilderness" looks alike in every direction...

[starlite9]

I can see being in a flat place with no visual referances getting lost, but even a desert has ways of telling you which way you are going. The sand is blown by the pervailing winds and will have "ripples/dunes" just like ocean waves and if you pay attention, you can stay in a straight line.

When you look at airports, they are mostly built to be in line with the directoion that the prevaling wind normaly blows so aircraft can land into the wind, pretty much the way of the winds work all over the world... There are exceptions, but not many.

It doesn't matter where in the world you are at, there is alway something that will guide you.... If you look...

[JohnPF]

Six walkers forged through a flat, forested region of Germany. Three trekked through the Sahara desert in southern Tunisia. (A sandstorm stopped further testing in the desert). All walkers wore GPS receivers so that the researchers could analyze their routes. The results, published today in the journal Current Biology, showed that no matter how hard people tried to walk in a straight line, they often ended up going in circles without ever realizing that they were crossing their own paths.
But there was a twist.
Circular walking befell only the four forest walkers who had to walk in overcast conditions and the one desert walker who walked at night after the moon had set. Those who could see the sun or moon managed to travel fairly straight.
Previous studies have shown that bees, pigeons and a variety of other animals move in tight circles when orienting cues such as the sun are missing. The new study suggests that, whether we're conscious of what we're doing or not, people are tuned in to those types of environmental signals, too.

Lost people really do walk in circles - Discovery.com- msnbc.com

So it is not so bad, but still your last bus clients might have been those especially suited to getting lost

[Marty Van Diest]

At night there are stars unless the clouds cover it. If you can't tell which way you are going...you sit down and wait until you can.

In a forest, there are trees, all you have to do is stop occasionally to line up trees ahead of you with trees behind you. The thicker the forest the more you stop.

You have to have a little common sense. I don't see how you can really become lost when you are in a mountainous area.

I don't think these guys were really lost, they were just unprepared for the conditions and needed to be rescued. If it takes an extra day or two to hike out, but you know the general direction of the road you aren't lost. You just want to be rescued because you can't handle the conditions... ie, you really need a shower. I think that's the case with a lot of these people who we are rescueing lately.

[Glitch]

Originally Posted by JavaPhil

I haven't been lost in the woods (or elsewhere, for that matter) for years. But I usually do the simple things. Score a tree, break a branch on a bush, take frequent bearings, carry a topo map, set up cairns of stones, and still carry my supplies and survival gear with me. And I STILL think I might get lost. But I think I could avoid it twice in one season.

The shame of getting lost once would probably keep me pretty close to home. I mean, seriously, can't you sight on the mountain and figure out east from west, north from south and the relative bearing you took to get to the site?

He forgot his compass, or what? Couldn't be bothered to mark his trail?

What a maroon!

YouTube - What A Maroon!

I got lost once, but not for long. I had a compass and topo maps, this was before GPS', and I took frequent bearings. However, I mistook a slough for a creek I was looking for on the Topo map, and began following the slough in the wrong direction. Not by much, just a few degrees, but it was enough.

After a couple hours I realized my mistake. I was still paralleling the river when I should have been moving away from the river. I set up camp, and got my bearings straight the next morning. I had hiked about 3 miles in the wrong direction before I realized and corrected my mistake.

It is very easy to get lost when you have no navigational aids. Trying to "dead-eye" your way to a location 10 or 20 miles away that you have never been before is not advisable. Even with navigational aids, such as a compass and/or topographical maps, you can still end up going in the wrong direction for hours before realizing the mistake.

The old "moss grows on the north side of the tree" trick commonly used in the lower-48, just does not work in Alaska. Alaska gets so little direct sunlight that the moss grows on all sides of a tree. Using the sun to navigate by is also very risky this far north. In the summer the sun is in the northern sky and makes clockwise circles, only setting for a couple hours in the northwest before rising again in the northeast. Distant landmarks, such as mountains are also of limited assistance, only providing a very general direction.

[nenette]

Originally Posted by RayinAK

It's more of a trail than anything. Years ago someone probably drove the bus on the trail, maybe during the winter when the ground and mud froze (don't really know). But the bus had been used for years and years by hunters and other people as a shelter. Then this guy dies in it, and now all the people who have read the book about his "adventure," or those who have watched the movie, go into a sort of "pilgrimage" in memory of the guy who died there.

You make a good point- One of the sad things about this situation is the movie did not talk about this kids mental health issues as did the book. So the movie glorified this as an "adventure" type saga when in actuality this was a depiction of what happens when people don't get the help they need. Instead of using this as a learning experience so people learn to intervene when there is bizarre behavior the movie encourags this type of behavior by glorifying the situation. People act like lemmings and follow this kid right over the edge.