I’ve heard this advice for years, but as someone who has spent a lot of time outside, my take is that it is oversimplified. If you are lost, you absolutely should not just sit down where ever you happen to be and wait for rescue. That rescue will take days to get started, and could take days more to find you - if they ever do. You can almost always solve this problem in 5 minutes or less by simply exploring the local environment and finding the trail again or noticing landmarks that lead you back to the trail. Wandering 100 yards off trail to take a poop and then getting a bit disoriented shouldn’t result in 6 nights of shiver-bivy in your rainjacket and a 100 person search party. It should result in you being mildly annoyed that you walked up and down the same hill a few times before you found the trail again.
Really depends on where you are. Only once have I got lost in a trail, and I knew it was a small park, so we just chose a direction and walked forward until we left it. Was very tiresome because of the dense vegetation, but we made it out safely.
I’ve heard this advice for years, but as someone who has spent a lot of time outside, my take is that it is oversimplified. If you are lost, you absolutely should not just sit down where ever you happen to be and wait for rescue. That rescue will take days to get started, and could take days more to find you - if they ever do. You can almost always solve this problem in 5 minutes or less by simply exploring the local environment and finding the trail again or noticing landmarks that lead you back to the trail. Wandering 100 yards off trail to take a poop and then getting a bit disoriented shouldn’t result in 6 nights of shiver-bivy in your rainjacket and a 100 person search party. It should result in you being mildly annoyed that you walked up and down the same hill a few times before you found the trail again.
My advice is to pick a direction and chop down every tree in front of you. If you continue chopping down trees you’ll eventually spot the trail.
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Really depends on where you are. Only once have I got lost in a trail, and I knew it was a small park, so we just chose a direction and walked forward until we left it. Was very tiresome because of the dense vegetation, but we made it out safely.
Being lost is what you are when trying what you suggested doesn’t work.