The night is pitch black, and I cannot see a thing. I stumble out from the trees, hands stretched out like antennas. The sagebrush and rocks snag my feet, and I fall. My stomach drops. My heart skips a beat. My palms are scratched.

I am trying to find my campsite, a mile from the Idaho backcountry hot spring where I have just been soaking in. By the time I crawled out of the pool, night had fallen, and I could not find my headlamp or my lighter.

I thought I could find my way back by going downstream, where the trees loomed dark like a narrow alley. Now I have to admit to myself that I am lost, no one knows am here, and I am freezing. I can’t relax.

The past week had been an emotional whirlwind. For a year, I had prepared to join the Peace Corps in Morocco – giving up my job, car and rental house, and packing my life for the next two years. But days before orientation, I got a call: my application was under review, then revoked. Suddenly, I was left to piece my life back together. I did what I do best: head for the wilderness.

In March, the cold of the Rockies makes the wilderness feel as if it begins right outside your body, and the very real risks of hypothermia or frostbite raise the danger for anyone who strays off course. Starting a hike between 2pm and 3pm can be particularly risky in winter, since it can make hikers prone to disorientation as darkness falls quickly.

I knew all of this: I had decades of experience in the backcountry, including working on trail crews for 13 years, serving two seasons as a fire lookout, assisting with wildlife studies, and staying at a remote ranger station in Glacier national park to prevent poaching. I had even spent my honeymoon in the Brooks Range of Alaska, packrafting 80 miles (129km) in some of Earth’s most remote wilderness.

In short: I never thought this would happen to me.

Quick Guide

Survival tips for lost people in the wilderness

Show • The most critical step is to stop moving, take a moment to breathe, and calmly assess the situation.

• Identify immediate threats and prioritize the most critical needs first.

• Maintaining a positive mindset is essential for survival.

• Resilience and adaptability help sustain morale and encourage resourceful thinking.

• Protect yourself from the elements. Use natural shelters such as caves or overhangs, or build a basic shelter like a lean-to.

• Dehydration is a serious threat, so locate and purify water sources through methods such as boiling or using a filtration straw. Avoid drinking unknown or untreated water.

• Fire provides warmth, enables water purification, aids in cooking, and can be an effective signaling tool.

• Before any outdoor activity, inform someone of your planned route and your estimated return time.

• A survival kit containing water, food, first aid supplies, a flashlight and signaling tools is essential.

• To attract attention, use whistles, mirrors, bright clothing or fires. Remember that three short blasts or three signals in a row are the universal distress signal.

• Often, staying in one location makes it easier for search teams to find you. If you must move, follow a stream or waterway downstream, as these can lead to civilization. When moving, try to stay in open areas to increase your visibility.

• Be creative and adapt to your surroundings. For example, a shattered rock can be used as a knife, and evergreen branches can provide insulation.

• Familiarity with wilderness survival techniques such as fire starting, navigation and shelter building is vital.

• By combining these strategies and maintaining a strong will to survive, individuals can significantly increase their chances of overcoming the challenges of being lost in the wilderness.

Nationwide, roughly 100,000 search and rescue (SAR) missions are conducted each year. While about 90% are eventually located – alive or dead – by SAR teams, the scale of the effort is huge. On average, an active search lasts about 10 hours. Survival rates drop steeply after the first 24 hours, with the chances of survival falling to just 5-10% after three days.

Search and rescue operations cost US taxpayers approximately $5.1m annually and rely heavily on federal teams, such as the Forest Service and the Coast Guard. Recent budget cuts have reduced staffing, making rescues more challenging.

That night, as I fumbled in the darkness, I promised myself that if I were to survive, it would never happen again. And the first thing I needed to do after going home was to learn everything about the art of survival.

‘I became the problem’

No matter how much time you spend in the wilderness, eventually, you will get turned around. It happens to everyone – even survival instructors and seasoned backcountry pros.

In 1985, Susan Purvis was a survival instructor for the School of Urban and Wilderness Survival. The program aimed to help troubled inner-city kids connect with the outdoors.

In the Utah desert, Purvis and another instructor split up with their groups of kids, agreeing to meet that evening.

Purvis brought along a teenage girl who was not as physically fit as her and decided to take a shortcut by descending into a drainage area, believing they would reach the agreed-upon spot more quickly. They ended up in the wrong place, with the other group nowhere to be found. The sky looked ominous, as if it would rain, and night grew dark.

Purvis became angry, blaming everyone but herself. She even criticized the girl for being out of shape.

Susan Purvis with members of the School of Urban and Wilderness Survival. Photograph: Courtesy of Susan Purvis Search and rescue expert and author Robert Koester often explains that hikers in the desert behave differently from those in the woods. The desert is more inhospitable and challenging to navigate without water. Mirages haunt and confound the mind in the day’s heat, causing logic to unravel. People often forget that desert nights can become bitterly frigid, while days become swelteringly hot.

They carried little more than a poncho, some rice and lentils, and no reliable fire starter. Looking back, she said she felt foolish for breaking the rules and splitting up, but her ego had gotten involved. “I thought I could fix the problem,” she said. “Instead, I became the problem.”

She pressed on instead of stopping to seek shelter. As they stumbled over sagebrush in the dark, Purvis yelled: “How could this be?”

Experience can breed overconfidence, a phenomenon often referred to as the “expert halo”: the false belief that mishaps happen to others, not to you.

The girl began to cry and sat down, prompting Purvis to scream in frustration: “There is no time for this. Get your ass up and move!”

Meanwhile, the other group, sensing something was off, sent an SOS to the base.

It started to rain, and they stumbled upon a wikiup, a primitive shelter used by their school. This unexpected discovery shifted Purvis’s demeanor completely; she realized they would not freeze to death and that she would not kill the girl by pushing her too hard.

That night, they huddled together for warmth.

By dawn, the head instructor began tracking Purvis’s footsteps. At daybreak, a dehydrated Purvis and her student marched back up the plateau in search of identifiable landmarks. Around 2pm, they finally reached a road and began walking east. Within the hour, a familiar suburban pulled up: Purvis’s boss. He had been looking for them for 15 hours.

“Where the hell have you been and how did you get lost?” he asked.

In denial, she replied: “We’re not lost.”

Upon reflecting on her experience 40 years later as she wrote her memoir, Go Find: My Journey to Find the Lost – and Myself, Purvis realized she had cycled through the classic stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining and despair – the same stages rescuers often see in lost hikers.

If they had not stumbled upon the wikiup, Purvis feared she would have slipped into depression – the fourth stage where all hope fades, and one feels like giving up. Ultimately, after surrendering, victims reach a state of acceptance.

“Yes, I could have been kinder, gentler with my words,” she told me. “Words matter. I think I was in a punisher mood. That is how behavior changes, or so I thought. At the survival school, the death march and the suffering were part of the change of behavior.”

Today, Purvis tells everyone that if they are lost, they should stay put. For rescuers to find you, the best color to wear is blue, because it is not frequently found in nature. When panic sets in, stopping and breathing can be the most essential actions. People who panic are far more likely to injure themselves, compounding the situation beyond just being lost. In high-stress moments, a clear head can make the difference between a temporary setback and a full-blown crisis.

Purvis believes tracking beacons and satellite phones are helpful, but if technology fails, “it will bite you in the butt. People need to know how to use a map and a compass, and have situational awareness,” she said. Batteries in your phone and GPS can run out of juice at anytime.

“Navigation is a lost art,” she said.

The trouble with groupthink

According to Joe Blattner, chief of Missoula county search and rescue, there are two main categories of outdoor emergencies: those that involve meeting a schedule and those that involve pleasing another person.

Weekend adventurers often try to fit a specific adventure into a limited timeframe, regardless of the weather conditions. This can lead to exposure during storms, navigating in darkness, injuries, falls, and getting separated from the group.

“Pleasing a person” is more insidious. Blattner explained: “One person isn’t going to say, ‘Hey, I’m getting a blister,’ or ‘Hey, I’m not comfortable in this terrain.’” Others may feel pressured to keep up with someone more fit. This reluctance to speak up is common and can become a problem if the person waits too long to signal their distress.

Groups are especially vulnerable to “groupthink”, where decisions are made collectively and no one feels personally accountable for their actions. In these situations, looking out for one another becomes crucial, as tensions can escalate quickly. Chaos can ensue when people start yelling at one another, and fear mounts. This dynamic can devolve into a Lord of the Flies scenario frightfully fast. (Interestingly, having to take care of someone in distress can provide the group with a helpful focal point.)

Survival in these situations hinges on a mix of skill, judgment and sheer luck. We can control how far we push ourselves and the risks we choose to take – but nature does not always play by our rules.

The Swiss cheese effect

Mike Schaedel and Abrei Cloud, both in their early 20s, were in Yosemite in late September 2005, planning to climb the east buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, a 1,100-ft ascent (335 metres) comprising 11 pitches – considered one of North America’s “classic” climbs. Schaedel had more than a decade of climbing experience, while Cloud was relatively new to the sport.

Both were newly dating and eager to please each other. But a late start and poor decision-making led to what some experts call the “Swiss cheese effect”: a disaster rarely comes from one big mistake, but from multiple small ones that align, like holes in a stack of cheese slices, allowing catastrophe to slip through.

“My friends said it was a perfect route for Abrei and me,” Schaedel recalled. “They said: ‘It’s totally casual, no big deal. You’ll cruise it. There are plenty of people on it.’”

With their friends’ relaxed assessment of the route, Cloud and Schaedel prepared their gear, including one water bottle each and food for the day. They set out around 11am, despite Cloud’s concerns about starting late. Schaedel, who had handled most of the planning, neglected to bring a topographic map of the climbing route. They also lacked photo descriptions, headlamps or cell phones.

The Yosemite valley floor is approximately 4,000ft above sea level, and the weather was beautiful, with sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. They wore long-sleeved shirts and shorts, and only one climbing group was ahead on the route.

Schaedel led each pitch, and things went smoothly at first. He placed trad gear into the wall, attaching the rope for safety measures. Trad gear, used in traditional climbing, relies on putting protection into natural features such as cracks and constrictions in the rock face, rather than relying on pre-placed bolts. But midway through the first chimney section – a narrow vertical crack you climb by bracing your body against both walls – the rope slowed.

Mike Schaedel and Abrei Cloud. Photograph: Courtesy of Mike Schaedel and Abrei Cloud That is when Schaedel realized it was Cloud’s first chimney climb – not the best time to learn.

Yelling down from 140ft up, he explained the technique: “Move your hands down, move your feet up, and push your back up the wall.”

Once she finally made it up, he could tell she was “punch-drunk”– mentally and physically exhausted. By that point, they were 600ft above ground, and up seemed an easier way to go than down. The second chimney pitch spent Cloud’s energy even further – and dusk was under way.

The typical profile of a lost hiker is a man between the ages of 20 and 25 (Schaedel was 24 years old). Men are more likely to push ahead without a plan, or perhaps assume they do not need one.

Blattner, the SAR chief, believes that in a crisis, the best thing to do is to stop, slow down, breathe and think. “We often see people make swift decisions because they feel like they need to remedy getting lost immediately, and that’s often not needed. So, get oxygen to your brain and sugar into your body, stop, have a snack and stay hydrated.” This will enable more informed decision-making than letting panic take over.

The initial response to being lost is typically intense, involving the release of adrenaline that triggers a fight-or-flight or freeze reaction. This leads to increased heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, nausea and confusion. The amygdala reacts similarly to a panic attack, even in the absence of real danger.

Fear disrupts metabolic processes, circulation and decision-making skills, while high emotional states and physiological responses contribute to poor judgment. Increased cortisol can impair memory formation and cognitive function, making it harder to recognize familiar cues and complicating the ability to formulate a plan.

That is precisely what happened to Schaedel. As dusk approached, panic set in and triggered his fight-or-flight response. He started making rushed decisions, climbing higher without placing enough protection, the gear meant to catch him in a fall. Without it, a single slip could have been fatal.

He scrambled up a mossy, pine needle-covered corner and suddenly realized he was off-route. No classic climb with heavy summer traffic would be this overgrown.

Unable to downclimb in the dark, he had Cloud lower him. By then, night had fallen. They were out of food and water, and the ledge was barely big enough for half their butts. They tied in and settled in as best they could, sitting upright, wrapping the rope around their legs for warmth. Temperatures dropped to below 40F (4.4C). The rock held a little residual heat. Cloud dozed fitfully between Schaedel’s legs. Their legs went numb, their backs ached, and they braced for a long, cold night.

At sunrise, they had to wait for feeling to return to their limbs. Once thawed, they chose to finish the last two pitches and hike off – easier than downclimbing – but the descent still involved tricky talus slopes and a few rappels down steep rock.

Looking back, Schaedel feels sheepish about underestimating the magnitude and seriousness of the climb. Today, they have been together for 21 years, married for 18, and have two children. Cloud must have forgiven him, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t double-check and triple-check the plans, the gear, and equipment numerous times before they head out on adventures – or at least that is what she told me.

“When small errors begin to accumulate, that’s when problems arise,” said Schaedel. “It’s difficult to recognize when to stop because they seem insignificant on their own.”

When the mind starts to fracture

In early May 2017, Madeline Connelly, 22, and her rescue dog, Mogi, made the drive from the Chicago suburb where she grew up to East Glacier park in Montana, to visit her uncle.

She decided to go for a short hike and stopped to let Mogi out. Around noon, she crossed a bridge and walked up the trail to enjoy the beautiful 80F spring day. Snow was melting around tree wells, sap was rising, and the scent of pine hung in the air.

At a fork, she headed downhill toward the river so her dog could drink. Along the way, she came across a pond and, on a whim, jumped in fully clothed, planning to dry off in the sun. Instead of returning the same way, she tried to take a shortcut back to her car to avoid the steep uphill climb.

While retracing her steps, she slipped on a wet rock. She and Mogi fell into the rushing spring runoff, and the dog’s leash wrapped around her neck. She clawed herself free, but the panic that followed sent her into a tailspin. Her heart pounding, she veered off course and headed deeper into the Great Bear wilderness, south of Glacier national park.

“Many lost hikers often take the wrong trail and continue because it resembles the correct one,” writes SAR expert Koester in his book Lost Person Behavior. “The person makes an error at a decision point and continues to go the wrong way because the terrain looks right or is gently guiding them in a new direction.” According to a recent study, the most common reasons people get lost are wandering off the trail (41%) and encountering bad weather (17%).

Connelly had two strikes against her: she was lost, and the weather was still late spring in the Rockies. She wore orange bib overalls, a T-shirt, a flannel and hiking boots. She had no map, no compass, no bear spray, no water – only her car keys, the dog leash and a $20 bill in her pocket.

Madeline Connelly and Mogi. Photograph: Courtesy of Madeline Connelly That night, she curled up in a tree well – the only snow-free space she could find – and clung to Mogi for warmth. Wolves howled nearby, their footsteps crunching on the hard-packed snow.

The next morning, she hiked a ways and thought she spotted campers across a frozen lake. She carried Mogi through a freezing creek to reach them, but the orange sign she had seen turned out to be a broken tree. She collapsed in exhaustion and dozed off. When she woke, her period had started, and she had lost control of her bodily functions from stress. She stripped down, rinsed her clothes in the creek, and washed herself. Mogi instinctively buried the blood – an attempt to mask her scent in grizzly country.

That night, she hung her boots to dry and tried to sleep again in the shelter of a treewell. Mice crawled over her as she shook with cold and panic. She woke in a daze, frightened but oddly calm.

A missing poster for Madeline Connelly. Photograph: Courtesy of Madeline Connelly Back in town, her uncle raised the alarm. He asked around and learned she had stopped for brunch at a local restaurant. Search and rescue launched a mission. Two Bear Air, a philanthropic helicopter rescue outfit based in Kalispell, Montana, joined the search.

The next day, Connelly heard a chopper overhead but did not wave it down. She did not realize it was for her, and worried she would be billed for thousands of dollars. (In fact, Two Bear Air provides rescue services free of charge.)

By the third day, she was cold, sick, coughing up blood and hiding in a hollowed-out tree while the weather shifted and sleeted. The chopper flew so close her hair lifted in the rotor wash – but it missed her again.

On day four, she was growing weaker, but she kept walking. She found a moose bone – a bad sign, a possible marker of large predators nearby. On day five, the snow finally firmed up and travel got easier. Emotionally raw, she began to cry. She asked forgiveness for things she had said, for people she had hurt. She promised herself she would live differently if she got out.

That is when Mogi started barking ferociously at her – she had no idea why the dog was acting strange. She sprinted toward Mogi and solid ground, just as the snow bridge gave way and collapsed. A hidden creek was running below her. She barely escaped with seconds to spare.

Later, in a wide-open snowfield, she spotted a helicopter again. She shouted and waved, but it passed. She asked the universe what was wrong with her that they didn’t help her. Defeated, she sat on a rock, chewed a yellow flower, and began to pray.

That is when she saw her deceased grandmother.

Individuals who are facing extreme hardships while trying to reach safety often experience auditory or visual hallucinations. This phenomenon is referred to as the “third man factor”, likened to the concept of a guardian angel or imaginary friend. From a psychological perspective, this phenomenon is considered a coping mechanism.

In his 1919 book South, Ernest Shackleton described an incorporeal companion who accompanied him and his crew during their 1914-1917 Antarctic expedition. “During that long and grueling march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it often seemed to me that we were four, not three,” he wrote.

A study on adventurers revealed that climbers, solo sailors, shipwreck survivors and polar explorers experienced this phenomenon the most. In his book Touching the Void, adventurer Joe Simpson recounts hearing a voice while he was trapped in a crevasse.

Connelly, for her part, heard encouragement.

“You’re going to make it,” her grandmother said. “Go back the way you came.”

Terrified but focused, she knew what she had to do: retrace her steps and get out.

On the seventh day, she noticed little pink tags with “SAR” written on them and dates marking the search. She spotted boot tracks, which ultimately led her to a group of SAR personnel, including seasonal National Park Service trail crew members, who were also volunteering to find her.

Two Bear Air airlifted her to West Glacier, where medical personnel examined her. She struggled to walk for a month due to a fluid buildup in her legs. Hypothermia can cause blood vessels, especially in the legs, to dilate. She credited her dog for keeping her alive.

Upon reflection, she realized the mind is one of the most potent forces in the world – capable of being your worst enemy or your greatest ally. “In that experience, my mind became my best friend,” she said. “Now I carry a deep love for myself and for others, because once you’ve seen how dark your own mind can get, you understand that you never truly know what someone else is battling.”

‘Lord, have them find me here’

While writing this story, I set out to find a man who had gone missing 80 miles north of the Arctic Circle – a case I had first read about in an Alaskan newspaper. Through several sources, I tracked down the man’s phone number and called him.

When we first spoke, Lonnie Arnold, an Inuit man from Noatak, told me it was difficult to talk about what happened. “It was a traumatizing time for me,” he said. “I try not to go there in my mind.”

He added: “It pretty much took my life away. I was essentially gone, but somehow I survived.”

In the first week of February 2012, Arnold and his friend traveled on a snowmobile from Kivalina, Alaska, back toward the nearest village of Noatak, which was 60 miles away.

The sun never breached the horizon but was in a state of twilight. The day began clear and cold, allowing them to see for miles, but the temperature remained a frigid -40F. Arnold was dressed in black ski pants, a thick “white man’s” down jacket, a beaver fur hat, thick gloves and black boots.

Arnold’s friend guided him to a snow-covered mining road that would have led him home to Noatak and then left to head back to his village of Kivalina. Arnold had to cross a small section of the Brooks Range to reach his destination. Soon, a winter blizzard struck, bringing 120mph winds and zero visibility. The fine-grain snow clogged his snowmobile’s carburetor and air intake, causing it to stall.

Arnold repeatedly pulled the snowmobile’s starting cord, but the engine would not start. His anger grew with each failed attempt. On the final pull, the rope snapped, sending him flying back 15ft. The snowstorm was so thick that he could not see the snowmobile until it was 3ft away.

He stayed with his snowmobile for eight hours – staying put, as experts advise – until the weather cleared. He thought he saw the snow-covered road in the distance. He left the machine and began trudging through waist-deep snow. As the hours passed, his energy waned and darkness fell. Near a depression in the road, he kicked and punched snow into a pile, carving out a small cave to cover his body, just as an arctic fox might. He dug deep enough to shelter and insulate himself from the cold.

He woke early the next day. Exhausted, dehydrated and lacking food, he realized that rescuers would never find him in this low spot. Spotting a small hill in the distance, he walked toward it. Upon reaching it, he began climbing; for every step he took, he slipped backward twice as much. By the time he crested it, he was on the verge of surrender.

“Lord, have them find me right here. I won’t move anywhere,” he prayed.

Summoning what little energy he had left, he created another snow cave, which he later referred to as “his grave”. It was 5ft long, 3ft wide, and 1ft deep. He buried his lower body and chest in the snow and fell asleep. That second night, however, he could not rest. A pack of four wolves howled nearby. He lay still, trying to suppress his fear, hoping they would not sense it, even though, rationally, he knew wolf attacks on humans are rare.

As the sky cleared, his mind grew groggy. He thought he heard snowmobiles but had no energy to stand or wave them down, and was frozen in. He stayed there for another night, and more wolves gathered and howled nearby; he thought he heard eight to 12 different ones. Their howls seemed to be growing closer.

Somewhere between the third night and the fourth day, he believed he had died.

It was then that he saw his deceased grandparents. “My son,” they said, “it’s not your time. What are you doing here? I’m sending you home. You’ve more to do.”

“The next thing I know, I was back on earth,” he said. “I heard Sno-Gos [ski bikes] all around me.”

A snowmobile came up to him. The rescuer thought he saw a black trash bag protruding from the snow; it was Arnold’s boot sticking out of the snowbank. His left foot was frozen solid. Snow had gathered 4ft on top of his body, except for his black boot sticking out.

The SAR team used an axe, shovel and pick to release him from the jaws of winter.

At the hospital, a doctor told him they would have to amputate his foot.

“You guys aren’t taking off my foot,” said Arnold. “I’ll die with all my limbs attached.”

“We’ll see what we can do about that, Mr Arnold,” said the doctor.

They saved his foot – a near-impossible outcome, but sometimes, miracles happen. It’s mostly back to normal – except for the occasional sharp pain that shoots from the center of Arnold’s heel to his pinky toe. “It feels like someone’s cutting my foot with a knife,” he says, “or hammering a nail into it, over and over.”

Whether Arnold actually died or he experienced the “third man factor”, is not for me to decide. Maybe he hallucinated his deceased grandparents. Or perhaps the veil between the living and the dead really did thin, just enough for that moment to happen.

The will to live

All of this leaves me with one question: why do some people survive, while others do not?

Blattner, the chief of SAR for Missoula county, emphasized that the psychology of lost individuals who survive often share a specific profile. “Survivors tend to have purpose, positivity and drive. They have something to look forward to, celebrate small victories, and occupy their minds with tasks.”

Maybe I am one of the lucky ones. As I got lost in Idaho, I took three deep breaths to help calm my racing heart. I took off my pack and put on my warm layers.

Benjamin Polley. Photograph: Courtesy Benjamin Polley That night, I spent hours perched in a tree, worrying about bears waking up from hibernation, the delicious smell of Mexican food in my backpack, hypothermia and the risk of frostbite. It was bitterly cold; my head ached under my beanie, and my fingers and toes hurt. The cold air stung my cheeks.

I wished on the occasional shooting star.

Koester, the rescue expert, noted that most hikers fear the wrong things. They are terrified of bears, cougars, snakes, scorpions and wolves, yet the probability of encountering one, let alone being attacked, is minuscule. Dramatic, unexpected weather changes and water crossings pose a much greater risk.

Finally, after more than eight hours, the marigold moon rose high enough to light my path. I walked to the creek – just a couple of rock hops across, as it turned out – picked up the trail, and followed it for a mile back to my tent. For the rest of the night, I lay awake, thinking about the psychology of getting lost and what allows some people to survive.

The next day, I found my headlamp in the backseat of the car.