Weight: 6.35 oz--Down quality:900 FP
Posted on 09/03/2025 11:50:09 PM PDT by thecodont
Halfway into a recent weeklong backpacking trip through California’s Sierra Nevada, nine members of a scout troop and their scoutmaster came across a man standing alone in a meadow deep in the Emigrant Wilderness. He appeared disoriented and didn’t have any hiking or camping gear.
The California Highway Patrol confirmed the man was Douglas Montgomery. The group soon learned the 78-year-old was an experienced outdoorsman and former scoutmaster himself. The group also learned that he was stranded after veering 15 miles off his intended route, had lost his backpack, and had been battling hypothermia for two days.
“We started very quickly realizing that he wasn’t all right,” said Michael-James Hey, scoutmaster for Troop 26 from Santa Barbara. “He was looking really bedraggled. He’s got cuts all over his hands. He’s very unsteady on his feet, and he’s being polite, but he’s pretty out of it.”
Montgomery was on a two-week-long solo backpacking trip. Several miles earlier, he’d set his pack down and left to get a better look at his whereabouts and the trail. When he came back, he was unable to find the pack, which contained all his food, water and camping gear, as well as a GPS-enabled communication device.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
One morning on a camping trip we saw a Boy Scout troop and its leader hiking by on the other side of a tiny creek and on their side about an 8 foot embankment, for some reason my buddy and I decided that the scout leader had to go into the creek, and without speaking, we (4 of us about 17) and the scout troop all seemed to understand everything, and the fight was on, not fistfighting, it was the grappling/shoving/throwing/tripping type struggle to get to their leader and get him into the water, it was a silent ball and we finally got him in the water, and then everyone went on their way, a strange guy thing.
“I had brought a waterproof topo printout which the leader frowned on as constituting excessive weight.”
A few grams?
L
OMG
We camped overnight below a small rise in the terrain, as originally planned. A bit later in the evening a minor concern arose for which it was considered advisable to contact someone back home. The millennials whipped out their cell phones but were perplexed when none of them could get any signal bars. We were on the east slope. I wandered a hundred yards to get a line of sight to South Lake Tahoe and easily got a usable signal. Then I Went back to camp to share the solution with my group. They were very relieved and were able to make the needed calls to home. But imo everyone should know that em signals such as used by cell phones do not penetrate dirt and rock, particularly if one is going in the back country and relying on cell phones in any way. I could mention a couple of other similar experiences from the same trip but I prefer to keep low key.
“I may be outmoded but my perspective was that millennials are fearless.”
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Fearless? Possibly…or too inexperienced to know better, and too arrogant about their modern tools to even have a Plan B…IOW, STUPID. No, not all of them, but very disproportionately compared to prior generations.
Lesson #1: Have a Plan B, because if anything can go wrong, it will. When you’re in the wilderness you need backup comms, back up food and water, backup shelter from the elements and backup protection.
Going ultralight is apparently a thing among millennials. They can get competitive and a bit snotty about it.
It’s usually a woman artist or author, but I guess it does happen to guys too.
It sounds like you need to treat it like a space mission: redundancy in everything.
Weight: 6.35 oz--Down quality:900 FP
In the Before Cell Phones era, there was much more emphasis on being able to operate independently. It was a given that if something went sideways, you were on your own. Getting off trail made it doubly so. The standard advice was to inform a trustworthy person with your itinerary and when you are getting out and supposed to be back. I never did that, because young people never think something bad will happen.
Generally park Rangers will note if someone’s car is at the trailhead too long maybe. One reason for permits.
Today, with easy comms, they get phone calls at park headquarters. “My feet hurt. We’re all out of Pringles. Come get me.”
You mis-spelled “insufferable”. There is an Ultralight website, I sometimes peruse it for comic relief more than anything. One of the more hilarious threads, the guy who runs the website I think, something like that, is totally blind.
He went on a solo backpacking trip. You’ll never guess what happened!
Difficult as it is to believe, he got turned around and lost off trail. All of the website members were giving updates on the SAR operations, but dancing around the rather obvious fact that going solo off into the wilderness if blind may have not been one of his Better Ideas. Younger generations have this weird thing about never criticising anything, at all, no matter how stupid. Even broaching the subject in a rather anodyne way was met with apoplexy. LOL.
Even my iPhone has a sat linked emergency text option. It’s tough to get lost like that in most of New England. But I would make sure I had some sort of emergency tracker on me if I were out west. It’s BIG out there.
I agree it is a generational concern. Upon reflection I would guess that I learned a lot from watching the usual 50s and 60s action tv shows when I was a boomer kid. Millennials also watched tv as kids but it was stuff like “friends,” which perhaps is not oriented as much towards illustrating life lessons unless life consists of living in a New York City apartment with comedically inclined buddies and flirts.
The millennials understand the excitement of putting oneself to some small extent in harms way in order to gain the rewards of experiencing the joys of the wilderness, but they lack the training and discipline to handle the challenges the come with being in harms way. much of the “blame” might be due to pop culture.
back to the original victim, i wont make excuses for him but at least he was able to keep himself alive until rescued.
The word you are looking for is ‘arrogant.’
Arrogance towards nature is always a recipe for disaster.
Yes, such as for bivouacs during long fast summit ascents
Yes, I could not think of the correct word so I finally just settled on snotty as an inaccurate approximation.
As for millennials not criticize each other, I dunno. Maybe it has something to do with an education fad that is currently in vogue.
My scout troop did this twice in 1968 and again in 1969. There were four pre-hikes of 3-days/2-nights and and you were required to complete 3 of them. We have topo maps, trail maps, and checked in with the US Park Service and Forrest Servics. Although we were hiking the Application Trail, sometimes in those days, you could hike for 3-4 days without seeing a town or a car, and there were few hikers.
Fast forward to today, when I section hike the AT, I usually run into a half dozen hikers on any given day, and rarely are there open bunks or sleep areas in the shelters.
With cell phones and Sat trackers, today it is so easly to head out on your own as I do. Garman’s sat packages offer insurance that covers two medivac’s by Helo’s so again one push of a button and your Air Cav are on the way;)
I am 69 and there is something oftentimes not understood about backpacking and hiking. It is simply walking. You walk and walk. Protect your feet. Don’t bend at the waist. And you continue to walk - you cannot really walk too slow nor fast. Given that your speed is regulated by walking you are limited in mountains to a mile an hour up hill and 1.5-2.0 downhill at my age; on the open terrain I can go up to 3.5 miles an hour. I plan a hike for 8-12 miles per day, and stay hydrated.
It is just walking and constantly - always when moving - LOOKING AT THE TRAIL where your feet are going.
People usually drop the pack to go 300 feet off trail to crap or pee. It is easy to get lost if you do not stick a hiking pole with a glove or hat on it twice the frist 150 feet or so. That gives you a directional reference point towards your pack. Better is when you also pull out your compass and follow a straight line, while leaving your “aiming stakes” or Hiking Poles behind you.
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I had a buddy (Mike) that was a bit over-the-top in every possible way. Mike and Jerry went on a trip to the Minnesota boundary waters for about a week. They had to portage canoes and such so minimalist was the way to go.
When they got to the first camp site Mike whipped out a 14" diameter full size dart board target and hung it up on a tree and started to shoot darts. Jerry was so pissed but Mike made his point. He was bringing what he wanted to bring.
God rest his soul. A life long friend since we were 14 y/o. I miss you Mike.
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