Now to the new story. Like I said yesterday, this actually happened, I have changed the names, but the rest is pretty close to the circumstances.
PANIC!
The Scenario
It was one of those gray days in late November. It had been well below freezing twenty-four hours a day since mid October. Snow was on the ground, deep enough to make walking difficult but not deep enough for good snowshoeing.
That morning when the three-man forestry crew started out the temperature was holding at minus fifteen Fahrenheit, a few flakes of snow were drifting out of the leaden sky.
Dave the crew leader and Frank, both quite experienced decided to leave their snowshoes in the jeep having decided to trade wading through the snow for catching their snowshoes on the twigs and branches that were still jutting through. Bob, the new addition to the crew, insisted that it would be easier going with snowshoes and had strapped them on. Dave had warned him but the “know it all” attitude that had been present from his first day on the job two days earlier prevailed and Bob shrugged off the advice.
It was just after seven thirty when Frank took a compass shot and headed out for their starting spot two miles away. They were each loaded down with their lunches, a one-gallon paint sprayer full of tree marking paint on their backs and a second gallon of paint being carried by the handle.
Bob quickly found that he had to walk to the side of the foot tracks left by the other two and consequently had to break his own trail. The other two took turns in the lead every ten minutes; he had to slog through on his own.
Dave and Frank reached the squared tree that would be the starting point in just under an hour; Bob, huffing and puffing caught up a few minutes later.
Dave indicated the base line that had been blazed out and said “Frank you take the south side and work your way to the boundary and back to the base line then back and forth moving along to the west. Bob you start here and do the same on the north side, I’ll go on down the baseline to the forty chain mark and will work both sides moving back towards here. Remember mark all spruce trees over sixteen inches dbh[1] and every third tree under sixteen down to twelve inches. Mark all balsam over ten inches. Okay, got that?”
Bob asked, “Do we have to measure every tree?”
“ Measure a few to start with until you get a feel for size and then every once in a while to make sure your eye is still in sync.” Dave replied. “Okay we’ll meet along the base line around three it should be around the twenty five chain mark, if you are past it go back to the twenty and we’ll all meet there.”
Before Dave finished talking, Frank had pumped up his tank and immediately left on a south bearing but carrying out a zigzag course of about a chain[2] wide marking selected trees with the blue paint.
Bob watched Frank while he in turn pumped up his tank then started north. He measured a half dozen trees, marking two of them then shrugging put away his measuring tape and started zigzagging but zigging out to close to a chain and a half.
Dave watched Bob mark his first two trees then headed out along the baseline.
All three worked through the day, Frank finished up back at the baseline at quarter to three, he was just past the twenty chain marker; Dave arrived at the thirty chain marker at about the same time and headed back down the line. They arrived at the twenty chain blaze only minutes apart. There they found Bob’s lunch bag on a stick with a brief message on the brown paper; ‘2:45 headed back to jeep cutting across’.
Dave looked at Frank and shook his head, “We’ll retrace our steps, hope that stupid bugger knows what he’s doing.” They headed on down the line eventually turning onto their tracks from the morning. Without the need to take compass shots and having a rudimentary trail they made good time. They reached the jeep at four o’clock . There was no sign of Bob. It was just starting to get dark and the snow that threatened through the day started falling in earnest.
Dave warmed the jeep up then after a few minutes started to intermittently honk the horn. Five o’clock came followed shortly by full darkness. Dave obviously worried said, “What do you think? He should have been here ahead of us, because of his floundering on snowshoes maybe a few minutes later.”
“I think he has either hurt himself or somehow got lost.” Was the reply.
Dave nodded in agreement, “Okay lets get out and light a fire, help me get some wood, then you head into town and get some flashlights, better bring some extra clothes and food for both of us, it could be a long night.”
Fifteen minutes later Frank was on his way, it was an hour into town and an hour back; it would be going on for eight o’clock before he could get back. Thanks to the snow, now falling even more heavily, it was almost nine before Dave heard the growling of the jeep motor and saw the headlights flashing through the trees.
They built up the fire then headed back once again on their trail from the morning. The going was extremely slow, their tracks were almost obliterated and the flashlights created shadows that were easily mistaken for footprints. They went as far as the starting point of the morning then realizing that further searching in the dark and the current conditions was futile they turned and went back. Back at the jeep they built up the fire and then drove to town. They would return before daylight to start again.
Bob
Once Bob put away his diameter tape, he never took it out again; he picked up his speed to compensate for his wide zigging, which had impacted on good directional control. He skipped many of the smaller trees that should have been marked, concentrating on the bigger ones. Around noon he huddled against a large spruce, consumed his lunch and sat back until the cold forced him back to work. It was actually only two thirty when he wrote his note on his lunch bag. He didn’t agree with Bob’s idea of retracing the morning’s route so he calculated that if he headed out at North 30 East he should come pretty close to the jeep and save himself some steps.
He had cracked one of his snowshoes mid morning but hadn’t bothered to use his repair kit. Shortly after he started out on his return he snapped the ‘shoe’ in half between two small logs and fell face first into the snow. He discarded the broken snowshoe and carrying the other started out again. He failed to take a new compass shot and headed off at a slight tangent to the course he had decided on. He didn’t notice that when he fell snow had got into the pockets of his cruising vest and was soon melted by his body heat. He eventually took another compass shot but was already well off course. He neglected to replace the compass in it’s pocket and let it dangle from it’s lanyard; the melted snow had seeped under the compass glass and in minutes turned to ice. On his next compass shot he failed to notice the needle wasn’t swinging; he proceeded in a direction that was almost forty degrees off.
He stumbled on through the snow for almost two hours, then sat down against a tree for a rest. It slowly dawned on him that by now he should have found the tracks from morning. He checked his compass, and when he saw that the needle had frozen and was unmoving, he jumped up in panic, threw the second snowshoe down, discarded his paint gun and took off in a shuffling run. He had no idea of direction and in his panic changed direction several times. He ran until he was tired then fell, first to his knees then sprawled out face first in the snow. He had been sweating from running and as he lay there, his body cooled and the melted snow and sweat froze on his face, his hair and his clothes. Shivering he finally got back to his feet, it was getting dark but he started out again, sometimes running, sometimes walking. He charged into a small thicket of young spruce trees, forced his way through and stumbled out onto the bank of a small depression. His momentum carried him forward and he went over the edge and fell heavily onto the bottom. The depression was actually a creek, it had frozen over but the water level had dropped leaving a half-inch shell of snow-insulated ice. Several inches below the ice layer was open water. He crashed down the bank, broke through the ice and fell face first into the few inches of water! The shock stunned him for a few seconds and he laid there the water soaking through his clothes, then he lunged up and out and on hands and knees clawed his way up the opposite bank. He struggled to his feet and now in a state of total and unreasoning panic set off at a dead run. He charged through and over small trees and shrubs he hit and bounced off of larger trees, he fell many times and in one of those falls or perhaps in a collision with a tree he broke his right wrist. His face was scratched and bleeding, his now gloveless hands gouged and torn.
Blindly he circled and again fell down the same bank and again broke through the ice, this time with only his left arm to support his fall his head snapped forward and a protruding branch plucked his right eye from its socket! Crying in agony and despair he rolled onto his back and struggled to his feet. Somehow he crawled up the bank once more, but now exhausted and mortally hurt he stumbled slowly and erratically along for a short while. He didn’t notice the falling snow; he didn’t know how dark it was. Finally he walked into the root of a fallen tree and found a shelter of sorts in the apex of the root and the trunk. He crawled under the tree trunk and in pain and misery he curled into a ball. As he shivered violently, his blood retreated from his extremities and he – slept?
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