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Outside Magazine September 2002

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The Hard Way
I Know Where I'm Going
On getting lost, GPS, and a farewell to maps

By Mark Jenkins


	(Illustration by Tavis Coburn)

IT HAS CREPT UP ON ME SLOWLY, like an illness. Last night, studying the map beside a small campfire, I knew. I just refused to believe it. I crawled into my sleeping bag haunted by my dawning certainty.

Now, another day deeper into the mountains alone, it is undeniable. The long drainage I'm descending is curling southeast, but I should be going west. The physiography of this valley is V-shaped, incised, river-cut; I should still be in a U-shaped glacial trough. And I've dropped into an impossible bamboo jungle; I should still be above timberline. After six weeks of pushing into one of the most remote and isolated regions of the Himalayas, I admit it: I'm lost.

I stop. I sink onto a moss-padded boulder, slide out from under my humongous pack, reach into my back pocket, and retrieve a worn Ziploc bag. I slip out the precious contents, and for the thousandth time open the map.

The creases are almost torn through and the print worn away; hand-scrawled numbers and symbols are scattered across the page like unfinished equations; notes and sketches fill the margins as if it were some forgotten alchemist's scroll; soup stains blot the middle; a candle burn chars one edge. It is a declassified U.S. Defense Mapping Agency 1:500,000 topographic Tactical Pilotage Chart H-10B. Magnetic variation, 1° west. Contour interval, 1,000 feet.

I tug on a lanyard and a plastic rectangle swings out of my front pocket: the compass. It's scratched and grimy, with smears of sunscreen on the base plate—a Suunto M-3G Global Leader with all the standard features: magnetic needle, meridian lines, two-degree graduations on a rotating dial, direction-of-travel arrow, magnifying glass.

Perched on the boulder, I spin the map, forcing north to roughly match the disconcerting direction the compass needle is pointing. Using the magnifying lens, I once again scrutinize the cryptic brown contour lines.

One inch equals eight daunting miles. Two days ago, hiking up and down for ten hours across magnificently serrated terrain, I covered a quarter of an inch. Unbelievable obstacles hide between the lines. At this elevation, an unscalable ridge or a spire 900 feet high will not necessarily appear on the map. Likewise an uncrossable canyon 900 feet deep. Just two thread-thin contours can represent an insurmountable 2,900-foot wall. Navigating by foot through this part of the Himalayas with this map is akin to trying to walk across Alaska's Brooks Range using a state highway map. But it's the best available. This is a much-disputed, military-controlled region: the borderlands where India, Myanmar, and China are uneasily adjoined. There is a bold disclaimer printed in a box in the center of the map: "Aircraft infringing upon Non-Free Flying Territory may be fired on without warning."

I study the map, but it's no use. I don't know where I am.

I set up camp, collect firewood, cook. Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, I watch a very large red ant crawl up onto my bare knee, bite me, then march back down onto the ground.

It's at this moment that I decide it's not true: I do know where I am. I'm right here. Beside my campfire, in a forest surrounded by mountains, eating rice, drinking creek water. Is the ant lost? Hell, no. OK, then neither am I. I'm in the eastern Himalayas, somewhere in the 118,400 square miles of my map. I'm not actually lost, just temporarily misplaced. Like the car keys you find the next day, right where you'd put them.

Too much is made of getting lost. Many people ludicrously equate getting lost in the wilderness with imminent death—an ironic, self-fulfilling fallacy. You get lost, hence presume you're a goner, and what do you do? Panic. Make dumbass decisions, do dumbass things. It's your behavior, not your location, that cooks your goose. Humans can go a month without food. All you need is water, shelter, and the good sense to avoid hypothermia, heatstroke, and injury and you can survive for weeks in the wild. Being lost should only be a temporary affliction with minor consequences.

There are exceptions, however. Like my present scenario. It's not the mountains that will kill me. I've been warned that if the Myanmar military catches me, I'll be executed. If the Indian Border Security Force arrests me, I've been informed, I'll be sentenced to several years in prison. On the other hand, experience tells me that if the Chinese military nab me, I could conceivably bribe my way out with a plausible fib, a $100 bill, and the last of my whiskey.

I scrunch into my bag beside the campfire, record the barometric pressure, the altitude, the temp, take a hit of single-malt, sleep.

The next morning I mentally backtrack to my last known whereabouts. In the process, I realize how I misplaced myself. It was a seemingly insignificant choice between crossing on the left-hand or right-hand side of an ominous pyramidal peak. I was exhausted, trudging mindlessly uphill, and it was snowing. I took a few cursory bearings, chose the left-hand side for no good reason, and laboriously punched over the murky, drifted 15,000-foot col. It was the wrong pass.

Identifying the problem isn't the same as fixing it. I spend the rest of the morning scaling the highest peak I can find, a 6,000-foot ascent. Fortuitously, it's a clear day. Standing atop a cold, windy, unnamed, unknown summit somewhere in Asia with my humble map and compass, I begin taking bearings. I triangulate off three, then four, distant mountaintops, and still can't reconcile the lay of the land. It's only after triangulating off seven separate summits that I determine where I am: China. Ahhh.

I place a tiny dot on the map but write in block letters in the margin: "GPS, please!"

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Mark Jenkin's first collection of Outside columns, The Hard Way, will be published in the summer of 2002 by Simon & Schuster.

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