[thaumasiotes]

> Good luck finding your way out of the national park with your empty phone.

That's why the national park is full of clearly marked trails.

If you're backpacking through unmarked wilderness, you need a navigation system, and you know you need it. That's 0% of people to several significant figures.

[bigiain]

I have ended up in neighbourhoods in cities I'm not familiar with, which all have "clearly marked roads", but knowing I'm on the corner of Smith St and 22nd Avenue isn't the same as knowing how to get back to somewhere I know where I am.

Having a very coarse idea of compass directions lets you do things like "I just need to keep heading east until I hit the railway line, then follow it to a station", or "I can head to the coast then turn right and I'll eventually end up at Cliff House, and I know how to get home from there".

It is still a useful skill, especially if you ride a motorcycle, where those strategies are often "good enough" that it's not worth stopping to pull out your phone (even if you do have coverage and battery...)

Even just being at a large event like a festival, and being able to look at a map with north indicated and then go, "yeah, so we need to go _that way_ to get to the stage we need next" is better than trying to match landmarks from the map to choose which direction to go (in my opinion...)

[nradov]

I assume you haven't gone hiking in many places. In national parks and similar areas the trails are often vague, poorly marked, and easily confused with animal paths. Get just a few steps off the path and it's easy to become completely disoriented, especially in dense forest where you can't see anything but trees.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/hawaii-hiker-amanda-eller-apologi...

[daveslash]

I agree. There are some trails that are poorly marked. Other times, spring snow-melt will create what looks like a trail, misleading people. Flash floods can wipe away whole sections of trail. I've had fallen trees, yet to be cleared by trail maintenance, obscure the actual trail and I end up following an animal path or an otherwise deprecated path. Hiking in snow presents yet another problem. There are several places I've hiked above the timberline that are wide-open scree fields with no discernible markings. There are plenty of "unmaintained" trails -- they're on maps, but not the beneficiary of any upkeep. Even with a flashlight, hiking at night in thick cover can be a real challenge at times. Many trails are well marked, but there are many instances in which they're not.

>> If you're backpacking through unmarked wilderness, you need a navigation system, and you know you need it. That's 0% of people to several significant figures.

I semi-regularly backpack through unmarked wilderness with no navigation and no map, and I have friends who do as well. But as you said, perhaps I'm in the 0% to several significant figures.

[thaumasiotes]

> I semi-regularly backpack through unmarked wilderness with no navigation

If this were true, you'd be lost. I'm including things like "keep the mountains on your left" in the category of "navigation".

The people complaining about forests are correct in that regard -- in a forest, you can't see the mountains, the sun, or the stars, and getting lost, unless you have very good training in forest navigation, is pretty much inevitable. (If there's a river, you _can_ still see that.)

[mirceal]

as someone who has gone hiking in most of the national parks in the west of the US I can tell you that trails are marked pretty well and whenever you’re in doubt you should just go back. most people that get in trouble are a little too adventurous for their own sake (or just plain stupid in their decision process)