What to do when you get lost on DofE: a step-by-step guide
You’ve probably heard the horror stories of your best friend’s sister who got lost for four hours in the pouring rain on her DofE expedition. Getting lost can be a demoralising experience if you have the wrong mindset and don’t know what to do in the situation. In this article I’ll go through the steps you should take to get back on track and keep group morale high.
If you get lost on DofE, first stop and try to locate yourself. Failing that, walk a short distance to higher ground or open fields to increase chances of finding an identifiable feature. If this fails, evaluate the situation and consider contacting your assessors.
First things first…
It’s OK to get lost
Getting lost in some capacity on a DofE expedition is almost a right of passage. It’s incredibly rare to fail your expedition for it, and at the end of the day you’ll still be in your tent or back home.
On my Gold practise expedition my team got really lost. We ended up having to climb over barbed wire fences (not advised), cross streams (not advised), and managed to misidentify a dead sheep as a footpath (not sure how). It took about four hours to reach a checkpoint that should have taken just one, but that’s ok. We kept up spirits by accepting that getting lost is part of the process, and working through it.
Think about it like this: getting ridiculously lost will likely produce some of the most memorable moments of your expedition — the best memories tend to be the ones you least planned for.
Don’t use your phone
It can be very tempting to take out your phone and turn on GPS when you’re lost and certain there are no assessors spying on you from behind a tree off in the distance. I’ve been there and I get it, believe me. But unless you need the phone for an emergency — such as a member of your group is injured and unable to walk — don’t turn it on.
Anyhow, you would be surprised how unhelpful Google Maps is in this situation — and I say that from first hand experience. During my Bronze expedition we got very lost, and one of the members of my group decided to turn on GPS. He (thankfully) didn’t get caught, he (frustratingly) got us even more lost by misreading the map on his phone.
The reason GPS is not helpful is because Google Maps doesn’t know about the vast majority of footpaths, and you’ll likely see the location dot placed in the middle of a field and be none the wiser. Your physical map, however, has an incredible level of detail, from telephone towers to field boundaries to contour lines.
It depends on where you are
I did all my DofE expeditions by foot and in the British countryside, which is mostly open fields and woodland. This is also the case for the majority of DofE participants, and as such that is what the advice below is aimed at.
However, if you get lost travelling over water on a canoe, the specifics of what to do will be different. If you get lost in a different environment such as desert or thick forest, the specifics of what to do will be different.
Stage 1: stop
As soon as you think you might be lost, stop walking. Take a breathe and look around. You need to ask yourself a few questions: when did you last know where you were, and can you work out where you are right now?
Was the last time you knew your location in the previous 10 minutes, or the turn you took an hour ago? If you knew your location 10 minutes ago, can you work out where you are now, and if not can you retrace your footsteps?
If you haven’t known your location for a longer period of time, can you try to identify something recognisable on the map, and if not what are you going to do so that you can?
Attempt to work out where you are
To attempt to work out where you are, the first thing to do is orientate yourself. Use your compass to check whether you’re facing North, East, South or West and orientate your map accordingly.
Then ask yourself: what identifying features can I see? This could be more obvious features like a house or a telephone tower, to more nuanced ones. For example, is there a field boundary in front of or next to you? Can you identify the tall hill in the distance using the map’s contour lines?
If you can work out where you are, problem solved. If you can’t, you’ll likely have to move on to stage 2: move.
Stage 2: move
Should you retrace your footsteps?
Many expedition assessor’s will tell you to stop and retrace your footsteps the instant you realise you’re lost. But they often don’t realise just how lost you can get. They don’t realise that, in your attempt to retrace your footsteps, you might be just as lost half an hour later, but in a different location.
This is not to say that retracing your footsteps is necessarily a bad choice — just sometimes. If you know that 15 minutes ago you went over a specific footbridge, and you can retrace your path back to that footbridge, then that is the best option. If you are able to get back to a known location in a reasonable amount of time, do.
But if you can’t remember the last time you knew your location (or if it was a long time ago) then you might want to avoid going back on yourself — especially if you’re not 100% sure which way you came to get to where you are now.
There’s also a mental aspect to retracing your footsteps. It’s a lot easier, mentally, to continue walking forwards than it is to turn back and walk the same path twice. Sometimes, this aspect may cause you to not turn back when you should do, so bear this in mind. But other times, when both options may be viable, the effect on group morale of turning back may help to make the decision.
Find the high ground
If you can’t identify your current location, and have ruled out going back on yourself, then clearly you have to go forward.
Just like Obi-Wan did against Anakin, finding the high ground gives you an advantage — especially if it’s on open fields with minimal tree coverage (not quite a river of flowing lava, admittedly). Stay reasonable though — if you see an unexciting hill in the far distance, don’t aimlessly hike towards it for two hours.
The goal of finding high ground is to give yourself a much better chance of identifying features that you can pinpoint on a map. If you know the location of an object you can see then you can either attempt to work out your current location by deduction, or simply move towards that object.
When my group became hopelessly lost on our Gold practise, this is exactly the method we used. We hiked to the top of a nearby hill, scanned the landscape 360 degrees to see if we could find something, and managed to identify a dam a few kilometres away that we could see on the map. We then hiked directly towards this dam, eventually hitting an identifiable footpath.
Of course, if you’re hiking somewhere relatively flat then finding high ground isn’t an option. In this case, look for an open field where you can see as many potentially varied features as possible.
If, however, after moving towards high ground or open fields, you are still fundamentally lost, you may want to move on to stage 3: evaluate.
Stage 3: evaluate
At this point, stop moving again — you need to evaluate the situation. What time of day is it? How long have you been lost for? How far might you have strayed off track? The important thing is to not put your safety at risk.
Depending on the rules laid out by your expedition assessors, you may want to consider phoning them to inform them you are lost. Similarly, if it is later in the day and you are concerned about nightfall, it may also be worth contacting your assessors.
If you have plenty of time, lots of food and water, and the group is in good spirits, you may choose to continue. This is a situation-specific decision that only your group can make — just remember not to put yourselves in any unnecessary danger.