# Lost Utah Kid Was an Idiot **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 22, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435 "2005-06-22T20:52:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435/141 "2005-06-29T10:05:17Z")
> [@Diane](#): > > I am very familiar with the Uintah Mountains. They are thick, dense, rugged terrain. It is not surprising to me in the least that the kid got lost. It happens every year – deer hunters, trained hikers, snowmobilers. . . people with a lot more training than this little boy who had absolutely none. Had he somehow got turned around and took the trail the wrong direction, it wouldn’t have taken long for him to be lost. I got lost in the Uintah Mountains on a scout camp in the summer when I was about 12. My friend and I went off exploring a small lake, and got separated. I went back in the direction I thought was our camp, but it wasn’t. There’s a lot of small hills and valleys, covered with trees, and I thought I was completely lost. Fortunately, I was able to retrace my step and found the original lake. My buddy had realized I was missing and came back for me. ---
**Author:** ![Diane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2acd7d/32.png) [@Diane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diane)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435/142 "2005-06-29T11:30:50Z")
> [@TokyoPlayer](#): > > I got lost in the Uintah Mountains on a scout camp in the summer when I was about 12. My friend and I went off exploring a small lake, and got separated. I went back in the direction I thought was our camp, but it wasn’t. There’s a lot of small hills and valleys, covered with trees, and I thought I was completely lost. Fortunately, I was able to retrace my step and found the original lake. My buddy had realized I was missing and came back for me. I’ve almost gotten myself lost, as an adult, just stepping off to pee. Them there hills are wilderness baby. ---
**Author:** ![xbuckeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9e8a1a/32.png) [@xbuckeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xbuckeye)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2005, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435/143 "2005-06-30T18:46:50Z")
I don’t remember my exact age, but I an guessing 7 or 8ish and it wasn’t wilderness, but the county fair. My family wandered away from me, thought I would notice them leaving and come along. I turned around from what I was watching and they were gone. I freaked for a few seconds, ran out to the fairway to see if they were right outside where they weren’t, so I cried. Then I remembered that i was taught to stay put if I was lost and ask for help. A grandmotherly woman saw me crying and asked what was wrong so I told her that I needed a police officer because I couldn’t find my mom. The woman offered to take me to the sherriff’s HQ in the fairgrounds. I agreed because my family was nowhere to be seen and police officers are there to help you. They paged my family and I did crossword puzzles with a SO until they came for me. (my mom was mad I had her paged because people would hear that she had lost one of her kids and think badly of her parenting skills and my dad was mad at my mom because he heard on the SO radio at work that they had me 'cause I’d gotten lost and she tried to pretend nothing had happened out of the ordinary at the fair when we all got home, but that is a whole 'nother thread) My personal opinion is that this kid was struggling with his gear (that’s what he was last seen doing) and his buddy left him. He got mad because he was having trouble and his buddy went off without him (understandable for kids at this age, esp. boys) so he was going to teach them a lesson by getting ‘lost’ and making them all worry so he went up the trail into the woods. Then at some point he went from being ‘lost’ to really being lost. I think he is lying about not knowing how he got away from the climbing wall. He wandered 5 miles over a mountian range accidentally? I don’t think so…not without some motivation. He would have noticed he was going the wrong way 'cause he didn’t cross a mountain range to get from the campground to the climbing wall. Preventing children from getting lost should be park of raising children. Teach them to pay attention to where they are. Teach them to stay put if they are someplace unfamiliar and don’t know how to get back. My sister works with kids about this age and a little older and tells them to hug a tree if they are lost. Teach them that there are safe strangers and to ask for help when they need it. Teach them that if they can’t wait for rescue, to walk downhill or downstream until they know where they are or find help. Teach them to make noise if they are lost. Once you are lost in the wilderness, you need tools to get unlost. I was lost on a backpacking trip a few months ago when a suprise foot of snow obscured the white trail markings in the Allegheny Mountains. We had extra food and water and stove fuel, a topo map, and compasses. Short of the map and compasses, we also knew the trailhead was the highest point around, so if we walked up we would eventually get to it. My question is why the hell aren’t Boy Scouts (or Cub Scouts, who are a part of Boy Scouts, actually) being taught this? Why aren’t schools teaching this? I pit the whole community for nobody ever having taught this child these skills, if the parents are too naive to. Even severely mentally impared people can be taught behavioral rules better than this kid exhibited. Then a week later, one falls into a river while throwing logs into it? Where are the leaders and why aren’t they teaching these kids what Boy Scouts is supposed to teach boys? ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2005, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435/144 "2005-07-01T02:33:12Z")
I was (am(?) is this something which you always keep?) an eagle scout that went through the program through the LDS church, I found that many of the “scout masters” had no qualifications and often minimal motivation. Scouting was tagged along with the “Mutual” church program back in the 70’s. Cub scouting was part of the “Primary” church program and the leaders were rotated through, without real training. While we went on yearly scout trips, and I’ve been to the same camp where he got lost, we did not get any formal survival training. There were a couple of scout leaders who were good. One guy in particular taught us how to look for shelter under pine trees if it snowed. (Which can happen in the Uintas even in the summer.) Unfortunately, many of the leaders hadn’t been scouts, and spent more of their time on the church doctrine stuff. Other leaders were more into having a great time, and not worrying about formal scouting stuff, which actually was pretty cool. My family was pretty good about teaching survival. From the time we were old enough to camp and wander about, we all had our little survival kits, which included a whistle, matches, wire saw amoung other things. > [@](#): > > Brennan’s mother, Jody Hawkins, suggested her son may have been avoiding searchers by following his father’s advice. > > “He had two thoughts going through his head all the time,” she said. "Toby’s always told him that ‘if you get lost, stay on the trail.’ So he stayed on the trail. > > “We’ve also told him don’t talk to strangers. … When an ATV or horse came by, he got off the trail. … When they left, he got back on the trail.” > > “His biggest fear, he told me, was someone would steal him,” she said. > > Brennan’s uncle, Bob Hawkins, said his nephew may have been afraid to contact the strangers because they weren’t using the password his family had adopted. So WTF? You have a child with problems, and you don’t either teach them that this is the exception to the password rule, or give the password to to the searchers. Obviously these are parents who aren’t thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2005, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435/145 "2005-07-01T03:26:08Z")
> [@xbuckeye](#): > > My personal opinion is that this kid was struggling with his gear (that’s what he was last seen doing) and his buddy left him. He got mad because he was having trouble and his buddy went off without him (understandable for kids at this age, esp. boys) so he was going to teach them a lesson by getting ‘lost’ and making them all worry so he went up the trail into the woods. Then at some point he went from being ‘lost’ to really being lost. I think he is lying about not knowing how he got away from the climbing wall. He wandered 5 miles over a mountian range accidentally? I don’t think so…not without some motivation. He would have noticed he was going the wrong way 'cause he didn’t cross a mountain range to get from the campground to the climbing wall. Y’know, I gotta admit this doesn’t seem like a totally out there theory. I’ve seen nothing that would qualify as _evidence_ to support it, but I did something similar when I was around 6 or 7 years old. Got mad and wanted to teach my parents a lesson. (Yeah, I was a petulant attention seeking brat at that stage.) _However_, the part about his not saying anything to the search parties and actively hiding from them seems more like the “don’t talk to strangers” thing was overemphasized by the parents. Who really knows… ---
**Author:** ![Sweetums](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Sweetums](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sweetums)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2005, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435/146 "2005-07-01T03:48:53Z")
> [@xbuckeye](#): > > My personal opinion is that this kid was struggling with his gear (that’s what he was last seen doing) and his buddy left him. He got mad because he was having trouble and his buddy went off without him (understandable for kids at this age, esp. boys) so he was going to teach them a lesson by getting ‘lost’ and making them all worry so he went up the trail into the woods. Then at some point he went from being ‘lost’ to really being lost. I think he is lying about not knowing how he got away from the climbing wall. He wandered 5 miles over a mountian range accidentally? I don’t think so…not without some motivation. He would have noticed he was going the wrong way 'cause he didn’t cross a mountain range to get from the campground to the climbing wall. ``` Not that I would entirely discournt your theory, but I have at least one (adult) friend who got lost in the woods, and ended up about five miles from his starting point at my house. My house is on top of the largest hill in the area, and my friend ended up at the bottom of a rather deep gully that he had to cross at least two other hills to get to. Fortunatly for my friend there was a road running through the gully, and he hitched a ride back to my house. Some people are just "bad in the woods." We know that this kid isn't that bright, and his parents have said that the had no sense of direction. I love it that the article in People stated that theis boy had "the makings of a future Army Ranger." :dubious: ``` [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-utah-kid-was-an-idiot/309435.md?page=7)