Lost and Found – Part I

“I was never lost in the woods in my whole life, though once I was confused for three days.” Daniel Boone

They say that when riding the Great Divide it isn’t a matter of if, but when you will get lost. The GD route passes through two provinces in Canada and five states in the US. Along the GD there is some seriously lonesome country and forests with far more grizzlies than people. Getting off route could put you in the wrong state, country or even existence! With that in mind, I’ve been reflecting on my many trips into the woods. Having had far more experience getting lost than in remaining found, I’m wondering how best to navigate the unknown of the GD.

Most riders use some sort of GPS. Garmin has for years produced a number of tools that theoretically make trips into the woods safer. When they first became available, my wife was anxious for me to have one. She was familiar with my tendency to “find” alternative routes in the woods. She’d waited patiently at missed “rendezvous” and had found me at the bottom of a canyon I hadn’t “planned” to hike. Far wiser than me, she knew a Garmin was more likely to get me home and back to work (income), than getting life insurance to pay out when no one could find the body.

With the Garmin instructions laid next to the updated life insurance policy, I planned a trip into the San Isabel woods. This time it would be a set course guided by Garmin not by my own confusion. My plan was to make a longer route by going cross country for a few miles and connect two trails. I painfully entered the weigh points for my route mindful of my wife’s desire to keep me safe. The route wasn’t far from civilization and there weren’t grizzlies, but there were bears.

Leaving the first trail, my eyes darted back and forth from the Garmin to my footing as I stumbled deeper and deeper into the woods with each weigh point. About midway between the two trails, somewhere in thick woods on the side of Greenhorn Mountain, I looked from my feet back to the Garmin only to see a blank screen.  Yes, back up batteries would have been useful, but electronics had not yet become part of my mindset for traveling in the woods. I found myself, once again, lost in the woods.

To be honest, I never minded being lost in the mountains. It often meant a few more bumps and scrapes from bushwhacking, but I was passing through areas that perhaps no one had previously set foot. Most likely no one else had passed through that area because it was so miserable to straddle downed trees and scrape through thick brush while trying to find a route around huge rocks and cliffs. Nonetheless, I mostly didn’t mind. However, with the Garmin I wasn’t really sure where I was, since I had blindly followed the weigh points.

Fortunately, in the front range of Colorado, on or off route, civilization is never too far away. And more often than not getting un-lost requires little more than heading downhill and finding road or creek leading back to civilization. As I headed down, I eventually stumbled onto a trail and from there found my way back – albeit a bit further – to where I had originally intended sans Garmin.

Some would conclude that the problem was not taking spare batteries. Perhaps, subconsciously wanting to find – by being lost – adventure in the woods, I concluded the Garmin was the problem. My subconscious desire was satisfied just a few weeks later when without Garmin, I became hopelessly lost in the desert of southern Utah: “Lost & Found: Part II”.