Posted on 03/20/2007 8:15:14 AM PDT by Lonely NY Conservative
No details yet....
Your statement using "general consensus" as evidence was what sparked my comment.
Unbelievable... but true.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a399d010a5083.htm
Been there done that.
I'm a bus driver for a Christian camp in northern Michigan...Way northern Michigan.
I love the drive home from the boys camp group 9-11. You can easily tell which ones never found out where the showers were for the whole week.
It sure does!
This was one lucky kid to have so many people praying for him.
The ladies from his Church were ecstatic. Such a happy ending!
The area is a cove...one way in and one way out surrounded on three sides by relatively high mountains. The campsite site approx 1.2-1.5 miles from the main road and you get there by a fire road. The fire road extends from the bottom of the park up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
All the streams in the cove flow to one main creek on which the boys were camping.
I am having a hard time understanding the "lost" thing because the cove is not that wide and the road bisects it. One would be hard pressed to miss one of these features if you trying to be found.
I will be real interested to hear the story unfold. There is a weirdness about it.
But I am glad he was found alive.
He deserves credit for surviving 3 nights in the woods but if he knew proper survival skills he would have been found much sooner.
I'm wondering if this 12 year old Boy Scout is mildly autistic ... ADD, which is way over used in order to explain away perfectly normal boyhood behavior isn't in play here, at least in my estimation. This kid was avoiding his rescuers ... no question.
Have you ever hiked the eastern Tennessee/western Carolina Appalachians? I'm experienced also and I know even adults can be lost and not found alive in that area especially IF they panic. The Laurel slicks and Rhododendron will hide you from anyone trying to find you. As I said you can be 5 foot away from a person and never know they are there in some area's. Then there's the cliffs to deal with and in that country even caves you may fall into.
I monitor the GSMNP and Cherokee National Forest Ranger radio's sometimes and have listened in on quite a few searches. This one was a miracle by any standards. A few more weeks when the growth really budded out they may have not found him period or his remains. The reports of his physical condition say he was out there. The weather up till yesterday afternoon was on his side.
this is the world we live in.....never trust, I guess....
I direct your attention to Adder's post #225.
"Yes...Prayer works...I said one for the boy this morning just before leaving for work...
I did the same. Praise the Lord!
Most people don't make it far from where they get lost. I've seen grown men hunting who had trouble in areas finding their way back to their car and this was in far more accessible areas. The tendency when lost for some reason is to wander aimlessly in a limited general area within a few miles like he did. Maybe due to the uncertainty the person walks one direction a while then another?
I understand it. But I still say he likely never saw the road. IOW I doubt he made it too far from where he walked off. BTW Cove areas along the edges have some of the more dense foliage. That would also limit his movement. Creeks in the area mean Laurel Slicks too and the stuff is nearly impossible to walk through. Actually you do better crawling.
Survived sub-freezing temps. God bless the Scouts who teach our boys to be men. And to you-know-where with those trying to destroy the Scouts.
I heard the kid had a can of Pringles, so I wasn't too concerned. /s
Most of the modern thinking revolves around "staying found" as opposed to finding moss on the north side of trees and the like. A lot of the generalised instructions like "walk downstream along a river to find a town" might not be true in the desert? We all start out on a camping trip "found" more or less. But I always carry at least two sure-fire methods of building fire even though it is hardly ever really required. Magnesium/flint, flint/tinder zippo/bic etc. I know how to make a fire with a bow-drill - this is a very good exercise/training in the garage or in a non-survival situation. In cold, rainy weather esp. fire has a morale building effect and keeps the critters away to a certain extent.
I spent a cold and very thirsty night under a tree in Northern California 50 miles from the nearest town. A front came in and covered the stars and moon. I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. After 10 miles on the trail back to camp my flashlight died. Woke up the next day to find myself 50 yards from my tent. Now I carry at least 3 flashlights, one of them is a windup.
I was a Star scout by age 12. School and band occupied a lot of time, so I didn't make Life until age 13. Eagle occurred at age 15 1/2. Too young for a driver's license.
By age 12 most Scouts should have the necessary basic skills to hang out in the woods, make shelter and find some "edibles".
Mine shows Richard M. Nixon, April 12, 1972.
At 12 I was 6 feet tall with a 10EE shoe size, but only 112 lbs. A year earlier I had been 4' 9" with a size 6 shoe. It was a tough year keeping up with clothing.
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