Wilderness Skills Schools, Part V:

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It was obvious to me that we were on the main trail, but the rivers and meadows we passed just didn't seem to be on the map. We were exhausted, unable to locate our campsite and, with one sick hiker weaving all over the trail, the only thing that kept our spirits up was spotting the other group ahead of us. They, too, were lost.

We were happy to see each other, but soon tempers heated up as we argued over the different theories on our whereabouts. After many disagreements, we all conceded that daylight was running out, a storm seemed imminent and there was only one clearly marked trail. The decision was made to grab the first decent campsites we could find.

After making camp, three ofus scouted out the trail ahead to get a better fix on our location. It was on our way back that dumb luck tapped us on the shoulder. Out of the blue, in the middle of nowhere, a fellow traveler decided to fill his water bottle from a nearby river. After screwing on the cap, he looked up to see a sign not three feet from his face—"Sweetwater Gap 5 miles." We quickly pulled out our maps. We were less than three miles from our pickup point.

That was yesterday; it's now close to noon. Time to break camp and make that 50-minute hike to our final campsite. Even though our bus will be arriving tomorrow around 10:00 a.m., we've decided to evacuate our friend before nightfall if at all possible. We redistribute gear and move on.

Leaving It All Behind

In less than two hours, I'll be stepping out of a hot shower, into a clean Hawaiian shirt and over to Svilar's Restaurant for one of their two-pound T-bone steak dinners. After that, it'll be the Elk's Club for a night of cold beer and country swing dancing. Until then, I'm just taking it easy and enjoying the bus ride. Today is graduation day at NOLS.

From my window seat, I spot an antelope high-tailing it across the sagebrush and heading for the backcountry that we just left. Before leaving, we met with Jim and Deb to discuss the events of the last few days.

Although we did manage to evacuate our friend yesterday, it wasn't a model performance. After we reached the end of the trail, two of us headed for our pickup point to notify Jim and Deb of our situation. While we were gone, other group members tried to muster help by leaving messages in the forest registry and on vehicles parked at the trail head. Luckily, one of the vehicles belonged to a NOLS staffer, so our sick buddy got to spend the rest of the night back in town.

But we made some mistakes. First, we failed to follow our preplanned evacuation procedure. It was as if each of us was running an evacuation of our own. No one was sure of what the group was supposed to do. That's a communication problem, and a strike against me in the leadership department.

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