Ask Explore: What Should I Know Before Hiking Alone?
Welcome to Ask Explore, Explore Magazine’s outdoor advice column. We’re here to answer all of your wildest questions about Canada, the outdoors and our place in it.
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I was planning a solo hike this weekend, but then I saw the story about the Squamish hiker who got lost for five days. How can I stay safe while hiking alone?
– Nervous About Navigation
On August 30, a 43-year-old hiker named Stanislav Volo headed out to hike Mount Habrich, one of the prominent peaks near Squamish, British Columbia. The trail covers about 13 kilometres with roughly 1,000 metres of elevation gain, travelling up through old-growth forests into the alpine. It can be slick, dark and steep.
Tyler Duncan, Squamish Search and Rescue’s operations director, described the route “in the context of Mr. Volo’s day as an advanced, alpine, scramble route. So not a hiking route at all.” He added that “if you get up into that area and it’s foggy and you don’t have good visibility, it’s very easy to lose your way for sure.”
That’s reportedly what happened to Volo. When he reached the summit, he found himself stuck in a pea-soup fog. He couldn’t find any trail markers and, to make things worse, his cell phone battery died. He had been relying on the phone as his only navigation device.
“I couldn’t find any sort of direction to actually go down,” he later explained to CTV News.
After spending about two hours in the fog, he heard what he said sounded like engines in the distance. Volo thought it was the highway and started moving toward it. The sounds were actually construction on a logging road in the opposite direction, and Volo ended up in steeper, more challenging terrain. While he was descending, he slipped and hit his head. He spent the night out sleeping fitfully on a rock, and the next day, he fell again, this time breaking his heel and numerous bones in his wrist.
For five days, he survived eating gummy bears and fireweed, an iridescent pink flower that’s so named because it’s one of the first plants that tends to colonize landscapes after wildfires.
“It actually turned out to be very sweet,” Volo told Global News. It makes some sense when you understand that, for generations, Indigenous peoples have used it for both food and medicine.
Meanwhile, an epic search for Volo unfolded, with search-and-rescue teams from across southwestern British Columbia mobilizing. They used drones and helicopters and spent days crashing through the bush searching for Volo, who had taken shelter in a cave.
“The air was so cold I couldn’t sleep all night,” he told CTV.
On the sixth day, Volo forded the Stawamus River, walked himself out of the forest and met rescuers on the Indian Arm Forest Service Road. On a map, the road is only about two kilometres, as the raven flies, from the summit of Mount Habrich. He described crawling out to the road before being met by rescuers who shuttled him to a waiting BC Emergency Health Services Ambulance where paramedics managed his broken bones and got to work rewarming him enroute to the hospital.
Volo’s survival is an incredible story, and the efforts that search-and-rescue volunteers made to find him are heroic. But, like many wilderness mishaps, situations like this can also be preventable.
How Can You Prevent This Situation?
First, remember that your phone has limited battery life, even if you start with a full charge. Most people rely on their phones for wilderness navigation these days. It’s not just day hikers using AllTrails; almost every professional guide I know and work with uses tools like Gaia, CalTopo and OutMap. But the key thing that differentiates professionals is that they always have at least one, but usually two, backups.
A spare battery pack can recharge a phone a couple of times. Mapping apps drain batteries, so if you plan to rely on that tool on a long hike, make sure you have a way to recharge, especially if you’re also using your phone for photos and videos. According to reports, Volo did have one of these, but it wasn’t working for some reason, so make sure you double-check yours before each big trip. You can also put your phone in airplane mode to save some battery life.
The second thing to remember is a map, a compass and enough navigation knowledge to make them useful. While these might seem like antiquated tools in our era of GPS and satellite communications in our pockets, the map and compass are still the gold standard for reliable navigation. They don’t require batteries, weigh next to nothing and, if you know how to use them, can be lifesaving tools. Learning how they work is pretty straightforward and, as a bonus, knowing how to read a map is a great tool for planning trips.
But carrying enough juice for your phone and knowing how to navigate without one are just two lessons we can take from Volo’s story. Another is to carry essential gear. We used to call it the “10 Essentials,” but depending on what you’re doing, the list might be longer than 10 things. AdventureSmart has guidelines for different activities and seasons, and a good place to start is this list from North Shore Rescue.
Hiking Essentials:
- A light, preferably a powerful, charged headlamp you can wear while hiking
- A signalling device, like a whistle, although flares are also useful in certain situations
- A fire-starting kit kept in a baggie or waterproof matches
- Warm clothes, rain gear and layers
- A pocketknife or multitool
- Shelter like a tarp or emergency bivvy
- Water and food, including more than you think you might need if you get stuck out. A water filter or treatment tablets are also a good idea.
- A first-aid kit
- Navigation tools, including a map and compass
- A communication device. This could be your cell phone if you’re in service. Or if your phone has built in satellite SOS or communication functions as many now do. But it could also be a satellite device like an inReach, SPOT or Zoleo. Bring extra batteries for anything electronic.
Even with this gear, bad things can happen, especially if we don’t plan and prepare. Wilderness accidents aren’t always due to gear failure or acts of God, but to human decision-making. It’s why AdventureSmart, in addition to taking the essentials, lists two other critical “T’s” for staying safe outside: trip planning and training.
Training means obtaining the knowledge and skills you need before heading out and knowing and staying within your limits. Trip planning includes four pieces of advice: plan your travel route, know the terrain and conditions, check the weather and always fill out a trip plan.
The Most Important Thing to Do When Lost
Volo, to his credit, did at least a few of these. This was far from his first hike, and he felt that the route was within his fitness and skill range. He also shared a detailed trip plan with his wife, which search and rescue personnel praised as one of the only ways they knew where to look for him.
However, he broke the cardinal rule of getting lost outdoors: it’s imperative to stay where you are. As he kept hiking, he got injured, and his situation became more serious. It’s unclear if he had a strong understanding of the terrain around his route. If he had, he might not have tried to descend through the route he took, an area that Squamish SAR’s Tyler Duncan described as being popular with rock climbers for a reason.
“It’s very easy to get cliffed out or stuck in an area you cannot get down from if you try and take the direct path,” said Duncan. He added that if you get lost, it’s best to stay in one place, rather than try to navigate your own way, especially without a map and compass.
It’s also worth noting, Nervous About Navigation, that hiking, like any outdoor activity, is riskier when you do it solo. And while there are plenty of good reasons to go it alone, if you are looking for hiking friends, consider joining a local hiking group or something like the Alpine Club of Canada or the British Columbia Mountaineering Club, which organize outings with seasoned trip leaders.
Don’t be afraid. While hiking, like everything in life, has some risk, with a little preparation and the right gear, avoiding a situation like Volo’s is pretty straightforward.
