It was long enough for her to get lost so it's fair to say it was too long to not be prepared for spending the night. I take overnight gear every time I do a solo hike like that, and I do hikes like that a lot.

Aimless mentioned that the remoteness of the trail is a factor and that's not something that can be ignored. Neither can the temps. Those are two of the reasons I take overnight gear with me on a day hike like that. Another is I might break my leg, which I recently listed as #1 on my list of concerns when hiking (and I've never broken a bone).

In this case, her biggest problem once she was lost was getting cold. She was not in immediate peril of death from the broken leg or hunger, it was going hypothermic at night when the temps dropped.

Had she not been found for a few more days the difference between being found dead or alive could have been a 3 ounce emergency blanket that costs $2-$6 and fits in your hip pocket.

It doesn't matter how much experience you have, if you go out ill prepared your chances of bad things happening increase substantially. I'm all for noting and learning from what she did right, but I won't ignore what she did wrong. She did a lot of things wrong and almost died as a result.

You have to always be humble in this sport because you're dealing directly with the forces of nature. We've all seen experience lead to complacency, and that seems to be what happened here. We can't afford to be complacent in this sport, it's taken the lives of those with experience and skills far beyond my own, and often times with the most common of mistakes. That, to me, is always quite humbling. This case is no exception.



That quote was about the dumbest one I read in the comments Tom linked to. It did make me laugh though. I thought about W_D, Lori, and OM sitting at a table with that guy when he said that and how much fun it would be to see what ensued from there.