[LoganCale]

I'm a very regular hiker and backpacker, and while I always feel bad in situations like this, I also always feel that people who get lost so easily that they can't find the trail—especially one so developed as the Appalachian Trail—after stepping off it for a few minutes shouldn't be hiking alone, or should be using some sort of navigational aid to help avoid that happening. She wasn't initially hiking alone, but she should've left when her hiking partner did if she wasn't competent enough to navigate solo.

Perhaps I'm unusual among hikers, in that I hike off-trail regularly, hunt for lost and abandoned trails for fun, and am a trailwork volunteer with the Forest Service, but I cannot understand how people get lost. If you lose the trail, you simply go back the way you came until you find it again. And yet people get lost all the time.

[DarkTree]

> you simply go back the way you came until you find it again

In a densely wooded, unfamiliar remote area, it isn't so simple just to backtrack, especially if you begin to panic.

In a way, it is similar to falling through ice, and not being able to simply find your way back to the hole you fell through. Panic plays a role.

[PuffinBlue]

Apparently Maine is singularly treacherous for hikers due to the density and scale of it's woods.

I've seen comments from many experienced hunters/hikers how say they live/hike in the woods up there and all of them mentioned how easy it would be to become disorientated.

Here's one for instance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2r32uy...

[maxerickson]

I wonder if a "road pressure" map would be useful to encourage people to know what they are doing. I've spent a lot of time in the woods in Michigan where there are developed roads all over the place. When there's (even moderately trafficked) roads 1/2 mile away in 3 directions, you aren't very lost, so I've never felt the need to be incredibly well prepared. When it's 5 miles in one direction the thought process needs to be a little different.