http://abcnews.go.com/International/missing-north-carolina-mother-daughter-hikers-found-safe/story?id=38781724

I just saw this on the news.

Quote :

"Rachel, who graduated from North Carolina State University in December, is in New Zealand studying at Massey University. Her mother was visiting."

[Edited on April 30, 2016 at 7:14 PM. Reason : .]

4/30/2016 7:10:52 PM

did Xena and/or hobbits save them?

4/30/2016 7:43:43 PM

How do you get lost in a park? Did they not have a phone, maps, or a gps?

--I guess I assume everyone would be smart enough to go prepared on a hike like that. Apparently that isn't the case.

[Edited on April 30, 2016 at 7:52 PM. Reason : s]

4/30/2016 7:49:05 PM

my friend and i almost got lost off of the great wall of china in beijing... we took a hike that wasn't well marked on the recommendation of a friend.. neither of us had very good cell service. it was possibly the scariest 30 minutes i've had in a long time where i got separated from her.

4/30/2016 8:05:07 PM

Couldn't you just follow the wall back to where you started?

4/30/2016 8:07:22 PM

Quote :

"How do you get lost in a park? Did they not have a phone, maps, or a gps? "

I was kind of shocked after searching for them on facebook. The daughter seems to have been around the world and back. It looks like she goes hiking in places like this a lot. I too would have thought she would have been more prepared.

4/30/2016 8:10:02 PM

^^ we did a four mile hike to get onto to the wall... we knew it was up.. but it was not an easy trail to navigate

4/30/2016 8:13:58 PM

You don't need cell service to use the GPS on your phone. You can have it in airplane mode and as long as the GPS is on it'll pin point you to within a few meters on a map albeit you have to have it cached or downloaded. If you've opened Google Maps at any point on your trip it'll have at least a high level area cached so you can navigate back to a road. Even without a phone or GPS with the advent of smart phones and GPS it's sad people have lost the ability to read a map. I grew up on road trips learning how to read a map and I even took an orienteering class at State (which helped tremendously for hiking). Now you give a topo map to a 20 year old and they look at you funny.

4/30/2016 8:26:56 PM

ib4 I'd hit it (Rachel)

4/30/2016 10:56:06 PM

Quote :

" How do you get lost in a park?"

Said park is nearly 500 square miles and pretty rugged

[Edited on April 30, 2016 at 11:00 PM. Reason : But yeah the answer is almost always not being prepared. People are dumb. Shit happens]

4/30/2016 10:57:43 PM

^^

5/1/2016 2:03:20 AM

You don't have to be a submoron to get lost in the woods. Sometimes there's just a string of bad luck.

Frequently a hiker sets out planning to do a very short, simple jaunt -- not the sort of thing you'd feel you needed a map or GPS for -- and something happens and they get turned around. At the point where their mental estimate of their location starts to diverge from their actual location, they may be pretty close to home base.


"Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales goes into a lot of detail about this. The author himself is pretty sharp and well-trained, but even he managed to end up in the kind of scenario I just described.

5/1/2016 2:49:41 AM

^True. I once went hiking through a forest/open field in Ohio with some family to look at some property my uncle was using to hunt. I still have never figured out how we ended up back at the truck by walking behind the cabin after walking straight on a path at the beginning and ending up at the front door of the cabin.

I have watched survivor man before and he said when attempting to walk in one direction in a forest you should stand next to a tree, look at the next tree, then find a tree straight ahead of that. Once you walk to the 3rd tree you need to look back and find the line you just walked, then match that with some more trees. And you shouldn't always step left, or right every time either. If you do all of that, you reduce the odds of walking in circles.

5/1/2016 10:58:23 AM

women...smh

5/1/2016 11:17:37 AM

Quote :

"Said park is nearly 500 square miles and pretty rugged "

So like smaller than most well known national parks in the US?

Quote :

"You don't have to be a submoron to get lost in the woods. Sometimes there's just a string of bad luck."

But yeah agreed. Although there's a difference between getting lost for four days and getting turned around on a hike. I guess if it's more than a jaunt I'm going to have a map or at least an idea of the trails in the area and well a phone always tells you exactly where you are.

5/1/2016 11:43:52 AM

^A phone will only last so long. If I was going to go hiking I would make sure I had a really good compass. Maybe these women did though, but still got lost.

5/1/2016 11:49:04 AM

Yeah compass + map most definitely.

--Although I've taken a phone on a week trip before and had it in airplane mode and only used it for occasional photos and map checks and it lasted the entire time. I have a dedicated GPS now but it's nice to know you can have a phone either off or in airplane mode and you can rely on it for your location.

For back country stuff I use one of these in tandem with my GPS:

http://www.findmespot.com/en/

They're $99 and require a $99 yearly subscription but work pretty much anywhere you have GPS reception and worth it if you know you're going to be in remote locations.

[Edited on May 1, 2016 at 12:31 PM. Reason : s]

5/1/2016 12:22:24 PM

Quote :

"So like smaller than most well known national parks in the US?"

No, that's not accurate, and the point was that 500 square miles is plenty to get lost in, even if it is "a park.' It's not like they got lost in Lake Norman Park.

These two were tourists right? That's probably part of the problem here...didn't know what they were getting themselves into. https://www.facebook.com/rachel.lloyd.3956?

5/1/2016 5:21:21 PM

Quote :

"No, that's not accurate"

The 5 most popular national parks in the US:

Smokey Mountain: 816 sq miles.
Grand Canyon: 1,902 sq miles.
Yosemite: 1,190 sq miles.
Yellowstone: 3,468 sq miles.
Glacier: 1,583 sq miles.

Which part of my statement is not accurate?

Also wouldn't anyone visiting a park be a tourist unless they live or work there? If you're visiting a park you should be prepared. That doesn't mean them being tourists was part of the problem. There are prepared tourists and unprepared tourists and they were the later.

Regardless yeah you're right they didn't know what they were getting themselves into.

[Edited on May 1, 2016 at 5:47 PM. Reason : s]

5/1/2016 5:37:34 PM

latter

And everybody knows everything's more fun when you're not prepared.

5/1/2016 6:33:35 PM

Well since no one else is going to say it...I'd hit it.

[Edited on May 1, 2016 at 7:35 PM. Reason : .]

5/1/2016 7:34:41 PM

Quote :

" Also wouldn't anyone visiting a park be a tourist unless they live or work there?"

Yes, that's what a tourist is

^ have you made a collage get?

5/1/2016 11:18:47 PM

you posted her fb link, just sayin

5/1/2016 11:20:02 PM

Quote :

"These two were tourists right? That's probably part of the problem here...didn't know what they were getting themselves into."

I thought you were implying that because they were tourists they didn't know what they were getting themselves into. If that wasn't your meaning than my mistake. I was just saying that tourists can be prepared but these weren't.

5/1/2016 11:24:34 PM

For sure, my point was tourists are less likely to be prepared than locals.

[Edited on May 1, 2016 at 11:35 PM. Reason : ^^ true. mostly trying to figure out if they've talked about what happened]

5/1/2016 11:26:56 PM

Makes sense.

5/1/2016 11:28:53 PM

You also have to take into account other unexpected hardships, like slipping and hitting your head on a rock, which Rachel did.

5/2/2016 12:07:06 AM

Quote :

"you posted her fb link, just sayin"

No, that was a photo posted on a news website story.

[Edited on May 2, 2016 at 8:22 AM. Reason : .]

5/2/2016 8:22:13 AM

WRAL has loved this story on FB. I, on the otherhand, don't give a fuck.

5/2/2016 1:33:15 PM

Quote :

"You also have to take into account other unexpected hardships, like slipping and hitting your head on a rock, which Rachel did."

After taking the wrong trail

http://www.wral.com/north-carolina-pair-survive-5-days-in-new-zealand-wilderness/15676494/

5/2/2016 4:28:21 PM

Trying to adapt to the wilderness
Where even foes close their eyes and leave

5/2/2016 5:09:49 PM

Some of my favorite excerpts:

Quote :

"Carolyn opened a package of cheese, only to have it tumble over the waterfall."

Quote :

"Once down, they followed a stream, figuring it would lead eventually to civilization. "

Yes because streams always lead downhill to civilization.

Quote :

"DAY THREE: Their cellphones died. They had been able to get reception at the summit but hadn't been able to get service since they'd gotten lost. They had tried to conserve the batteries by switching off data and apps while periodically checking in to see if they could get reception."

So after three days they didn't think to find the trailhead on a map with the GPS on their phone and walk in that direction?

At least they were smart enough to make the help signs. I'm betting neither of them had any survival skills or even knew how to read a map.

5/2/2016 5:56:31 PM

Well to be fair, the school systems don't teach people that kind of shit anymore, because supposedly math is more important than art or knowing what the fuck is going on around you outside of what your iPhone can tell you about it.

5/3/2016 12:11:52 PM

NZ Women Survive Being Lost in NC Wilderness?

5/3/2016 4:45:25 PM

K women survive being lost in the k wilderness

5/3/2016 5:15:35 PM

"On the next episode of I Shouldn't Be Alive..."

5/3/2016 7:50:28 PM

Quote :

"NZ Women Survive Being Lost in NC Wilderness?"

Smoky mountain national park is almost twice as large as the park they got lost in and the terrain is arguably harder to navigate in because of how lush it is. Could easily happen. Haha.

5/4/2016 1:22:01 PM

[Edited on May 4, 2016 at 1:29 PM. Reason : .]

5/4/2016 1:29:39 PM