UKH

Just been to Snowdonia for a couple of days and took a walk today up Y Garn.

I got to the point where the path(having passed Idwal Slabs and crossed the stream) starts threading its way through the boulders thrown out by the Devil from his Kitchen

I took a break there for a drink and a nibble and was joined by a family of four.

Says the Mrs to me: "Do you know where we are?"

Me "Yes, we're approaching the Devil's Kitchen"

Hubby (pointing to the upward path)"What's up there?"

Me "Boulders, boulders and more boulders"

Mrs "Is it easy?"

Me "Not difficult but more strenuous".

Hubby "Is it flatter?"

Me "After about seven or eight hundred feet relatively - yes"

Mrs - wait for it - pointing to Llyn Idwal: "Is that Lin Pardon? We wanted to walk round Lin Pardon and the guide on our phone said we would pass a farmhouse but we haven't seen one. Can we get to Lin Pardon this way?"(pointing towards Twll Du)

Me: "Not there and back today, have you got a map? Where's your car?"

Hubby "No, our car's down there" pointing towards Idwal Cottage.

At my suggestion they retraced their steps to Idwal Slabs and I last saw them heading round the west side of Llyn Idwal - definitely NOT Lin Pardon

;o|

I have to say I am curious to know how they came to think they were in an entirely different valley with completely different land marks

It's not uncommon in North Wales to bump into walkers who are miles away from where they think they are, as long as they are not in danger I find it quite funny

Indeed. My concern was that, although they were in no danger up to that point, they might have continued and got into some sort of difficulty for which they might have been unprepared.

I remember once, late one evening when I was camping at Hollowstones below Scafell Crag, a lone walker who'd come over Scafell Pike via Sty Head, pointing down to Wasdale and saying 'Is that Buttermere?' I wasn't quite sure I'd heard him right at first. 

Once, whilst still wearing a cast from a tibial fracture, I got half way up the approach scramble from milestone to the N Ridge of Tryfan and as I overtook a party of (expensively) well equipped ''student-aged' walkers they asked me " Does it get flatter soon" and " Are we nearly at the top?" 

Normally I would have switched to guide mode and taken them up, but in the circumstances had to just look around, point to the visible peaks and suggest they work out for themselves how high they might be......

The local tourist office employ families to wander around acting lost to allow those who consider themselves more skilled to feel a sense of superiority

Me, quite often.

I was once walking up the Llanberis path, maybe was about halfway between Halfway House and the top, when I noticed some figures looming out of the rain and mist over to the left.

Puzzled, I waited until they were closer. They had a map, and asked me where they were, I pointed out the spot, and they were quite surprised and very grateful, as they thought they were on the Glyders, looking for Glyder Fach.

They were soldiers in full army kit.

Groan

Remnds me of a tale I heard many years ago. In the days when the OS were still using trig points for triangulating some surveyors were landed on a summit by helicopter which then flew off into the distance. After recording various figures which they were unable to reconcile the surveyors eventually deduced that they were on the wrong mountain.

I can't vouch for the authenticity of the yarn so it may well be an urban myth.

Similarly, I hope the poor lads we met somewhat down-valley from Sampson's Stones in Eskdale ("how much further is it to the Wasdale Inn?") made it for closing time!

Many years ago when I was a student I had a summer job on the Ben Lawers nature reserve. Late one afternoon I was walking back down from the summit of Beinn Ghlas when I spotted someone who seemed a bit confused & asked if he needed any help. He was staring at an OS map & struggling to work out where he was but was convinced he was somewhere on the Tarmachan ridge. I tried to convince him he wasn't but he wouldn't believe me, repeatedly saying he was an officer in the army & knew how to read a map. In the end I left him, although I did check there were no cars reported left in the car park that evening.

I was once on the train going up to London with a very well-dressed American lady and her daughter sat opposite me. Had the impression she was over here working and the daughter had come to visit in the summer holidays. As we went past Twickenham, she said to her daughter "Ooh, look, darling - that's there they play all the tennis".

Met a couple this morning staring at their phone. Setting off on a 34 mile long distance trail. They'd missed the second turn. It's a nice day and I'm sure they'll have an adventure. Seemed happy enough

If you're going to get lost, get lost on a grand continental scale.  This is me, and it is the most geographically embarrassed that I have ever been

Two of us climbed a long alpine ice route in the Canadian Rockies, I forget which, but it went on forever as a long ice sheet.  I still bear a scar from a dinner plate that rattled down and hit me in the face.

We climbed up into the clouds; the world disappeared and eventually we reached the top.  The descent was straightforward - follow a ridge and it would lead to the valley.  We found the ridge and followed it down. When we emerged from the cloud, instead of a green pleasant valley and trees, all we could see was miles and miles of glacier and ice cap. 

Somehow, we had managed to descend on the wrong side of the North American continent.  We rather wearily turned round and headed back up into the clouds, where a different perspective and slower pace revealed the 10 foot step in the ridge where one ridge curved away to the valley and the other didn't. 

Having worked with ex army surveyors in the oil industry and seen their technical skill/knowledge and maths levels I'd wonder whether the helicopter crew were in the wrong.

Many years ago I bumped into a guy on the high ground at the west end of Edale in the Peak. It was foggy and he looked lost. He told me that he was heading over to Chapel-en-le-Frith and had been looking for "the road" for over an hour. After a quick look at the map it became apparent that what he though was a road on his map was actually the Cowburn railway tunnel. The pained look on his face when realisation dawned was something rather wonderful.

When I first time I ever used the Ben Nevis North Face car park, I missed the turn up the hill and yomped up the forestry track for a km or so instead.  In my defence we'd driven up from Cambridge and managed only a couple of hours sleep.

As I was just heading up Crib Y Ddysal from Crib Goch a met a lady coming the other way with a handbag dog on a red lead.  She was wearing a fetching pair of red high heals.  She had gone up on the train and decided to walk back down.  Somehow she had managed to turn right.  It was a slow walk back up to the railway, and I managed to pursuade her to go back to the top and catch the train down.

As we were passed on Crib Y Ddysal the passers by gave me dirty looks.  They obviuosly thought she was with me!

Well, you know what they say about giving officers the map...!

I work on a ship in the north sea. It's quite common to see fishing vessels trawling along subsea pipelines; these seem to act like manmade reefs, attracting fish. These pipelines are marked on charts. A lot of the guys I work with are ex-fishermen. Apparently one young fishing boat skipper thought he'd found a pipeline that hadn't been trawled. He went up and down it dozens of times but couldn't seem to find it on his echosounder.

It turned out he'd been fishing the division between Norwegian and UK waters.

I once climbed the wrong peak in the Dolomites.  In my defence we were only using the guide book description and not a map.  We complained about the quality of the route all the way but it wasn't until we got back to the hut and took a closer look that we realised.  

Al

I've walked down the wrong ridge twice in fog; once in the Brecons where there are two summits very close and I turned right at the first not the second and once on High Street when I followed the more obvious trail and turned right towards Haweswater instead of striking off north towards Pooley Bridge.  It's very confusing when you emerge from the cloud and what you see is completely different from what you expected to see!

Back when the RAF yellow canaries were still providing SAR helicopters in south Wales, I was out with the SARDA dogs and was dropped off by 169 on the end of a ridge to hide. The idea was that a searchdog and handler would be dropped off on the next flight. A couple of hours later I still hadn't been found and the handler got on the radio to me, rather irate, wanting to know where I was - had I moved from near where the helicopter dropped me? Nope, I was in exactly the right place. Handler still couldn't find me. Turns out the RAF had dropped the handler off on the wrong ridge, having been unable to navigate back to the one they'd dropped me off on. Oops!

But making navigational failures is all part of the learning process. Two friends and I once took the wrong ridge off Stob Ban (Mamores) and ended up on the West Highland Way on the Kinlochleven side rather than back in Glen Nevis where the car was. An expensive taxi ride was the cost of the lesson always to check the compass bearing coming off a summit.

And I can think of other people having made the same error - that dog leg back east is a bit deceptive.

Like our DofE teams who plan routes along parish boundaries, or, in one case, across a lake, following a 'track', which was actually a pair of low voltage grid lines...

During my first stay in France I bought a local footpath map with no real legend but assumed the coloured lines were all paths or tracks. Everything went well for a couple of hours on my first day out, then one path became very difficult to follow. I later found the legend on a different map in the same series (not IGN) & discovered I'd been trying to follow the boundary of the state owned section of forest (but similar forest on both sides).

A pal and I went up to 'bag' Beinn an Dothiadh in early December 2000.  There was some snow about, but only on north facing slopes.  We went up the usual way, up the south ridge then east along the summit ridge to the cairn.  It was a nice enough day so we sat down and ate our lunch before heading back down.  After a few minutes the following conversation arose:

"We're going back down the same way we came up, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Which side of the ridge was the snow on when we came up?"

"The left."

"Which side is the snow on now?"

"The left.  Oh..."

Once, when we fancied doing some bolts at Vallorcine, about 15 mins from the station, after we'd walked nearly half of the Tour du Mont Blanc, we decided we'd taken a wrong turn.
Doubled back and went down the pub.

If we are talking about our own navigation issues, here's one.

Climbing in Red Rocks, Nevada, in 2007, my mate chose 'Geronimo' on Rose Tower for the day's objective. Chooser navigates, so he navigated us to the pull in, then to the foot of the climb.

1st pitch. '5.7 dog-leg crack.' All went well.
2nd pitch. 'Thin crack from the left end of the belay ledge'. All went well, belayed in a tree.
3rd pitch. '5.5 Continue to a tree on a belay ledge'. Saw a tree in the distance to the left, so I headed up a corner towards it, but didn't arrive at the tree. Downclimbed a bit, then a delicate hand traverse to the tree, more like 5.10!
4th pitch. 'Steep crack up a black wall behind the tree'. No crack. No black wall. Partner said he felt spooked, so we retreated all the way back down.

Next day was my pick, 'Cat in the Hat'.   I navigated us to the pull in, then to the foot of the climb, accompanied by a strange feeling of deja vu. I looked at the route description:

1st pitch. '5.7 dog-leg crack.' 
2nd pitch. 'Thin crack from the left end of the belay ledge'.

etc. etc.