Anchorage Daily News

Unless you have been lost -- really, truly lost -- it is easy to dismiss Abby Flantz and Erica Nelson as a couple of twentysomething ditzes.

Granted, they didn't do much to erase this impression in a live interview with KTUU's Megan Baldino shortly after a four-day, $120,000 search-and-rescue operation at Denali National Park delivered them safely back to civilization earlier this month.

"I actually didn't think we were lost," said Nelson, 23.

Giggle, giggle.

"We thought we knew where we were headed the whole time," said Flantz, 25.

Titter, titter.

Next time, we'll "bring some more food," said Nelson.

Tee-hee, tee-hee.

What they were telling other media didn't help, either.

"We were gone long enough, we knew there might be searches for us, but we didn't know it would be this big," Flantz told The Associated Press.

Right.

When two young women miss work for days, when one of them not only misses work but forces the postponement of her sister's wedding in which she is supposed to serve as a bridesmaid, no one is going to get the least bit excited.

Especially not when they are last seen wandering off into the Alaska wilderness, where it is easy to drown in a glacial river or possibly, though highly unlikely, get eaten by a grizzly bear or become the victim of a violent crime.

All of those possibilities were discussed while the women were missing. Truth be told, after six days without a clue as to their whereabouts, the building consensus was that they'd never be found alive.

As Baldino put it: "So often in Alaska, we do these stories, and we don't quite have this outcome."

True enough. But then again, most search-and-rescue operations take place below the media radar. Most of the SARs in Chugach State Park right next to Anchorage never get a mention, probably because they nearly always end successfully. Same for the regular life-saving sorties of the pararescuemen from the Kulis Air National Guard Base in Anchorage.

Only when someone goes missing in a truly dangerous place -- say, Mount McKinley's Cassin Ridge -- does the story rise to the level of news. Or when something truly odd happens.

Flantz and Nelson were that oddity. They went on what was supposed to be a short hike off Denali Park Road into the high brush and scree slopes along the Sanctuary River, only about 25 miles down the road from Park headquarters. They planned, they said, to camp for the night, then hike back out.

This is not a difficult thing to do. It is not a challenging thing to do. It is not an adventure on which you would expect anyone to get lost.

The Sanctuary River flows almost due north from the Park Road in a slot between Mount Wright and Mount Margaret. For tens of miles to either side, the road runs predominately east and west. It is not easy to get lost here.

Follow the Sanctuary River upstream from anywhere north of the road, and it will take you back to the road. From anywhere in the Sanctuary River drainage north of the road, go south, and you will hit the road.

How Flantz and Nelson got turned around in here is a mystery, but how they got lost is not.

Lost is a state of mind, a very confusing state of mind. Once you think you're lost and start to worry, you stop thinking straight. That's the condition I expect Flantz and Nelson were in, despite denying that they ever thought they were lost.

They have admitted to trying to call 911 on their cell phone every couple of hours for days. We all know why you call 911.

Flantz and Nelson needed it not because they were on some "grueling trek," as the Minneapolis Star & Tribune described their little adventure, or wandering in the "vast Alaska wilderness," as ABC News pegged the story, but because they weren't thinking straight.

Fear had overpowered reason. That's how one gets lost. And that's all it takes.

"We had a broken compass," Nelson would later tell a TV station in Houston when she finally arrived to participate in the postponed wedding.

I doubt that. A compass is a very simple instrument, a magnetized needle floating in fluid. Even if the compass gets smashed, you can take that needle, float it in some water in the palm of your hand, and watch it point north.

What is more likely is that Nelson and Flatnz believed they had a broken compass. I've been there. So have a lot of other people.

When you start worrying about where you are, your mind starts playing tricks on you. It starts looking for its own way out, and when it decides on something, well, you're smarter than a simple instrument like a compass, right?

That needle can't be pointing in the right direction.

If you've never been lost, you probably won't understand. If you've been lost, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

When I was about the age of Flantz and Nelson, I spent 10 days lost near the Gerstle River in the Interior. One thing I learned from that exercise is that finding your way isn't so much about navigating across the ground as it is about finding a way through the fog of fear, panic, nervousness, dread -- call it what you will -- in our mind.

Flantz and Nelson failed this test.

How badly?

Well, even if that compass was broken, the sun in Interior Alaska still comes up every morning to the northeast and sets every night to the northwest. Draw a line between where it came up and where it went down, and you've found east-west. Draw another line perpendicular to that, and you've found north-south.

Go south from anywhere within tens of miles from where the two were eventually found, and you hit the park road in a day.

Or, even easier, sit down, get out your fire-starting kit and make a big smudge.

A smoky fire on day two of this silly affair could have saved more than $100,000 and delivered Nelson to Houston in time for the wedding.

But you don't think about this in the confused state of mind that is being lost. Let's hope Flantz and Nelson have learned. Let's hope others can gain something from it.

Carry the essentials of fire starting. If you get lost, start the smudge. Save us all the cost of SAR, and save your family the anguish, because despite what you might have read, Nelson and Flantz did not go through any "ordeal."

They went hungry for a few days -- big deal -- in a pretty benign corner of the Alaska wilderness. It was their families -- worrying, waiting and fearing the worst -- who went through the "ordeal."

Outdoors editor Craig Medred is an opinion columnist. Find him online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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