Lost in the wilderness

Regarding “One hiker’s peak of desperation” (Front Page, Sept. 19): I would like to thank Matthias Gafni for his thorough piece on a hiker’s neardeath experience getting lost in the wilderness.

The piece really needed a sidebar or a follow-up piece on what the hiker did right, and especially the very serious and almost fatal errors he made. He needed a hard-copy map and compass, and a GPS, plus training in wilderness medicine. I would be happy to write such a piece, namely, how to not get lost in the wilderness, how to prepare for a wilderness experience, and how to survive unexpected issues. With a stern caution to never hike alone. There is an important lesson here, that is, the way to not get lost is to always know where you are! Otherwise, if you do not know where you are, and do not have a map and compass and/or a GPS, how does one know in which direction to take the next step? The most common error is to head down off a mountain peak assuming one is going the direction from which one remembers wrongly having arrived. This was clearly the case for the hiker in question, who descended 90 degrees in the wrong direction.

Fred Schlachter, Berkeley