Surviving the night shift

FOR Patric Hedlund, it was a beautiful fall afternoon for a day hike on Pine Mountain near Frazier Park. Clear, bright skies. Hawaiian-shirt weather. A familiar trail. Her friend Amy tagging along with her Rottweiler-Dane pup. There was no sign of impending doom.

“We were walking along some banks and missed the cutoff to the main trail,” recalls Patric Hedlund, a Frazier Park-based editor who had done this hike at least eight times. “We ended up in this weird little parallel canyon that looked exactly like the one we’d expected to be in.”

The sun was plummeting. Realizing she was somehow on the wrong trail, Hedlund raced around frantically in the dying minutes of dusk -- up a steep embankment, through shoulder-high nettles, down a hill -- trying in vain to get reoriented against the clock. “We were totally confounded,” she says. “The mountain was in the wrong place.”

In minutes, it was cave black, a moonless night with temperatures that would drop into the hypothermic 40s. Hedlund had some water, a straw hat and a small keychain light that was good for checking her watch, if nothing else. “We were dressed in thin summer shirts, with no jackets, no way to make a campfire, and with little hope that anyone would be coming for us anytime soon,” she says. “So it was very odd hearing it come out of my mouth -- ‘I think we’re going to have to stay where we are.’ ”

It’s an all too familiar story -- day hikers suddenly on a much longer trip. No one ever thinks it’s going to happen to them, yet every year experienced and novice hikers alike get lost, injured or trapped by weather and have to face the specter of survival in the wild. Knowing what to do when the worst happens can spell the difference between a good adventure yarn and disaster.

Preparation begins by losing the illusion that day hikes can’t turn into all-nighters. “Especially this time of year, day hikers often aren’t prepared physically or mentally for getting lost or stranded,” says San Dimas Mountain Rescue Team coordinator David Smail, who cites a couple of incidents from the last two winters.

“We had one guy who went hiking around San Antonio Canyon and fell down a small chute,” he says. “Instead of just staying put, he wandered around -- and that’s what killed him. Otherwise, our teams would’ve found him quite fast.”

There’s also the 19-year-old from Pennsylvania who went for a hike on Mt. Baldy last October without taking warm-enough clothes or telling anyone where he was going.

“We found his video camera and a small day pack,” says Smail. “But we still haven’t found him.”

A more recent incident with a happier ending occurred last month when screenwriter Jonathan Lemkin, 43, and his hiking companion Clay Senechal, 23, got stranded overnight in a whiteout on 10,064-foot Mt. Baldy. After waiting through a frigid night on an icy slope , they managed to walk out the following morning.

“They did the right thing,” says Smail. “They stayed put.”

The first action if you’re stuck overnight on the trail is nonaction: Stay where you are and don’t panic. “Lost hikers need to keep their tendency to panic in check and stop traveling right away before they get even more lost and make themselves harder to find,” advises William Keller, a Nebraska-based wilderness survival trainer and author of “Keller’s Outdoor Survival Guide.” “Sometimes a person can calmly sit down, replay where they just traveled, and save themselves right there.” When they can’t, he urges day hikers to abide by his “4 o’clock rule.”

“That’s when they need to stop and plan on spending the night,” he says. There’s enough time to take care of the next steps -- building a shelter, gathering wood and making a fire. Food is usually not nearly as critical. “I’d just rather not freeze to death. You can go for a pretty long time without eating.”

A fire (a controlled one), Keller emphasizes, can have a calming effect if you’re stuck in the wilderness with darkness and rash decisions closing in. “It serves a huge function in cold weather obviously,” he says, “but it’s also something that keeps people occupied and company. Even if you don’t immediately need one, a fire is a good chore to focus on -- instead of freaking out and thinking ‘what the heck am I gonna do now?’ Plus it makes you much more detectable.”

Hikers should pack a reliable means of starting a fire in a variety of conditions. “Butane lighters don’t always hold up in the cold and matches don’t do great in the wind,” notes Keller. For real emergencies, Keller packs a couple of small road flares. “One strike, and boom, you have a very intense fire starter for at least 10 minutes.”

Even if you forget your flares, day hikers at least shouldn’t take to the hills without packing the 10 essentials, which may now number 12 or 15 items with the advent of life-saving electronic aids such as cellphones and GPS devices.

One of the latest gadgets being marketed to hikers are pocket-sized personal locator beacons, or PLBs, that can alert authorities via satellite and guide them to a hurt or lost person at the flip of an antenna.

“They cost about $600 right now,” says Smail, “but this thing will save your life. The PLBs with a GPS in them are even better because they give your precise coordinates.”

Still, no high-tech devices can replace the basic essentials list, which includes: map, compass, water, extra food, extra clothes, pocket knife, flashlight with extra batteries, matches and fire-starter, first-aid kit, sun protection (hat, sunglasses, sunblock) and a plastic emergency whistle on a lanyard. Make that 11 essentials.

Smail also recommends a trash bag, but not so that you can be tidy while you’re lost. “If you have to spend the night, it’s a windblocker, a waterproof poncho, and it’s going to help you stay warm.” Of course, one of the most important preparations is letting someone know where you’re going.

Lost Pine Mountain hiker Hedlund made the mistake of not telling her husband which trailhead she was leaving from. Authorities finally found her vehicle at around 3 a.m. that freezing night -- with a bear sniffing around it.

Hedlund and her hiking partner would shiver convulsively for 12 hours on a rock clearing near a stream, a safe distance away from any possible mountain lion perches (“there had been sightings”) and deer ticks (“Lyme disease”).

“We were woefully inadequate for 40-degree weather,” says Hedlund, whose lips would be tinged with blue for the next few days. “And there were so many added pressures against staying where we were. I didn’t want to worry people or feel stupid. There’s a tremendous embarrassment associated with making this kind of mistake, and a lot of incentive to try and rescue yourself and not face up to the fact that you’re stuck.”

But the sun rose the next day. And with it came a troop of rescuers in orange shirts who congratulated her for doing the right thing and staying put.