Leave Your Gear. Get Lost. Get Rescued.

The things that can happen to outdoor adventures never cease to amaze me. Years go by, books get written, stories get made into movies, and we all know better …  yet it happens again and again, like clockwork.

I was recently in the far quiet north contemplating life on the shore of Lake Superior, of course, I had a book in my hands while I listened to the crashing of the waves. A wilderness survival book nonetheless. In fact this book was about some real-life survival stories, one of which happened a mear ~50 miles or so from where I was comfortably reclining on a sofa with a hot cup of tea and my book watching the sun go down over that Big Lake.

And then, much to my surprise, as I scrolled through my phone … I saw a story pop up of basically that exact same thing happening to someone many thousands of miles away in Colorado. It was just too good to be true. Two stories, thousands of miles apart, a decade has passed … yet the same thing was still happening.

Loosing your gear when in the wilderness.

People get lost all the time in the woods and wilderness, and we could talk about that ad infinitum. Maybe we should some time. But, today we will just assume that particular problem is not going to go away anytime soon, it just happened, and it will always happen.

What we are going to pontificate upon today is the unfortunate and puzzling case of people ending up without their gear, for whatever reason, while in the wilderness and of course ending up in a VERY serious situation. The last thing you want to do is lose your gear. It’s your life in the backwoods. Literally.

Two Stories, a Decade Apart. Same Mistake.

Let’s dig into two very similar stories. One from 2001 in the remote Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota. The other is from just a few weeks ago in the Four Pass Loop of the Snowmass Wilderness in Colorado.

Both stories are lessons in what happens with you somehow loose your gear in the backwoods, which of course will put you in an incredible bind immediately. Here is a quick synopsis.

• 2001 – Boundary Waters – Jason gets lost on a backpacking loop, steps away from his backpack, tent, and all his gear into the woods … and never recovers it. Days later rescuers find him surviving in a tree inches from death.
• 2024 – Two hikers attempting the Four Pass Loop in the Snowmass Wilderness get separated from their gear … all of it … they are cold and wet and use their InReach device to summon a rescue.

It’s easy to be an armchair adventurer, but since I’ve spent my fair share of time in the wilderness of the West, going up and down mountains with nothing but the gear on my back, and up in the North Woods, more remote than any mountain, I think I might be at least a little qualified to speak on the subject.

Besides talking about the obvious things around best practices in the wilderness, which we all probably know, or think we know, the one rule that we probably don’t pay much attention to, but is clearly one of the most deadly … never leave your gear!

Now, if I’m honest and think back over the myriad of trips I’ve been on over the last few decades, I can think of times when I’ve done stuff maybe that might not be as egregious as these two examples but are teetering around the edges of ending up poorly.

It’s always innocent I assume. You set down your backpacks … because they are heavy, and hike up to a mountain top, a lake, up a side trail, whatever. Bad Idea. That’s how things go wrong. A storm comes in, people make a wrong turn, and you can’t find your back.

Now you are not only in the backcountry, but you are now without your most essential gear. Food, shelter, fire starter, etc. You’re screwed.

It’s something we should all contemplate. What good is all your fancy gear if you leave it to “go do something,” and end up without it? That’s exactly what happened in both these situations … thousands of miles apart and over a decade apart.

In both cases, people thought for whatever reason they needed to leave their lifeline, their supplies, gear, and shelter, and do a quick something. For Jason up in the North it was a quick walk through the woods, and he couldn’t find his way back. In the recent Colorado case, we don’t know the details, but I’m sure it’s extremely similar.

They clearly left their packs and tents somewhere, to do something, and could not recover. That’s dangerous. In both cases, night descended and snow/rain moved in. That’s a recipe for disaster!

Everyone thinks they are survivalist and can be on the show Alone, but do you really want to be stuck in the cold dark wet woods without anything but the clothes on your back? I think not. So don’t do it. Sure, you could always have a fire starter in your pocket, a side bag with some emergency blanket-type stuff in it that you keep on your person when you need to leave your gear. But, the better idea is to never leave your gear for any serious amount of time without a foolproof plan.

Nothing changes.

If these two stories so far apart geographically and through time teach us anything, it’s that being in the wilderness and backcountry is dangerous and there are plenty of ways to get in trouble, one of those being getting separated from your gear, which is arguably one of worse situations you could possibly be in. It’s almost impossible to recover from.

Have you ever lost your gear? Have you lost a piece of gear? Do you wander away from your gear, and in what situations?