Fit to Fight for Your Life

For many years now, I have been preaching that at any time, you should be physically prepared to fight for your life. When the shit hits the fan, we don’t have time to “train up” or “get ready”. We are either prepared, or not. We can’t anticipate an emergency. An attack, an accident, an injury, etc. but what we can do is make sure that we are in the best shape and and have the ability to deal with anything that may come up, no matter when. So the old excuses, “I will get in shape after the New Year”, “I’ll train for that run a couple of weeks before”, or even just the denial “That would never happen to me” may be echoing in your head as your life spirals into chaos and you regret those extra 60 pounds you are carrying on your body, or the fact that you can’t run up a flight of stairs quickly, or pull your own body weight over an obstacle. Since 2018, when I created Fire Team Whiskey, I had been preaching this mantra. I hope to God it never happens, but just in case it does, you need to be FIT TO FIGHT for your life. Guess what? In August of 2020, it happened to me.

Myself and my husband, who had been full time RVers for 2 years at the time, were in Forks, WA a tiny little town in the Olympic peninsula, home of the Olympic National Park and even larger Olympic National Forest. We were leaving Forks the next day for our next destination, so I was eager to get a last hike in. I kissed my husband goodbye and headed out in the truck to the trailhead. Before I left, as I always do, I sent my husband the screenshot of the trail name from the app that I use and an estimate of the time that I will be returning from my hike.

As I drove out to the trailhead it was obvious why the Olympic National Forest is considered a rainforest. The forestry was dense and thick, and it seemed that even though it was mid-morning the lighting was twilight. I had no cell signal, but this wasn't the first or last time that I have hiked without a cell signal. I had downloaded the trail map and had lots of experience navigating with just the use of map and compass. The hiking app said that the trail that I chose was unmarked, so I was looking for an obvious sign of a trail leading up onto the ridge at the correct azimuth. I found a trail, pulled out my compass, confirmed that the trail led off in the correct direction and started my hike. After about 30 minutes of hiking, I began to get concerned. I was having a hard time staying on the trail. Many times, the trail seemed to branch off into several directions and because of how overgrown everything was, I was having trouble differentiating my trail with all the others. I kept having to stop and check my compass to make sure I was still headed in the right direction. About 45 minutes into my hike, I decided to turn around and head back. As I began my decent back, I checked my compass and my mileage and made a mental note to walk the equal distance back at the 180 azimuth of what I had hiked up. At the point where I should have come to the bottom of the ridge area where the parking lot was located, I stopped with alarm. I kept thinking maybe I overshot the parking lot somehow, or perhaps my azimuth drifted. My anxiety was climbing but I wasn’t panicked yet. 

I completed concentric circles, trying to see if I had overshot, undershot or azimuth drifted my hike back. When that effort failed, I chose some higher elevation and climbed up, hoping I would be able to see the trail or parking lot or any sort of road from above. I even tried to grab a cell phone signal at the highest point I could climb to. No luck. I was lost. I had about 5 minutes of panic and then I walled all that off and settled into business. My experience and training kicked in, there was no room for panic. Panic would not help me out of this situation, so I made a mental shift to survival operations only.

The first rule of being lost is to not move.  I established my base of operations from the point when which I realized I was lost. I had an emergency whistle, so I hung it around my neck and set my alarm on my phone to remind me to call for help every 30 minutes. After that, I took an inventory of my hiking supplies. I knew that hypothermia was going to be the biggest risk to me and that I had to make sure I stayed dry and as warm as possible. I had a large amount of survival supplies on me as I carry much more than the average day hiker even on a short hike (see my 20 essential day hike items article).  If it turned out I was going to be stuck out here for days, if I could get to a water source, I could feasibly survive for a few weeks. I carry presoaked kindling and an emergency fire starter kit, so even with the damp, rain forest wood, I was able to get a fire going, dry out my clothing and keep myself semi-warm throughout the night. I stayed awake all night, often pacing to generate body heat and to keep myself alert and awake. I continued to call for help all night, hoping that people would be out in the area looking for me.

The next morning, I knew I had to make a critical decision. I told myself if I did not see or hear any signs of rescue by noon, that I would have to assume that I would be out here for several days, and I needed to get to a water source. I could hear running water from my location. Unfortunately, that meant I had to climb down a very steep ridge, so that would put me at risk of getting injured. Being lost was bad enough but being injured and lost was a recipe for disaster. Noon came and went and it was a risk I had to take. It wasn't easy. It took me about 4 hours to make my slow climb down the ridge to the river, but I made it safely to the bottom. When I reached the river, I took some time to remove my clothes and dry out since I was soaked through with sweat and mud, sterilize water, refill my water containers, and charge my devices with my solar charger. I had my phone set on emergency mode so that if by the smallest change that I got a tiny signal, my phone would automatically send out a text to my emergency contacts with my current GPS location.

As I walked the riverbed east towards town, I found an area where a branch in the river around a small island created a large opening in the trees. I decided to hunker down there. I figured I was more likely to be seen from overhead rather than me being concealed as I was on the ridgeline in the dense rainforest. I had an endless supply of water, so as long as I stayed uninjured, dry and warm, I knew I could survive for quite a while. I just had to be found.

I spent the days wandering up and down the riverbed, looking for any signs of people, roads or bridges and the nights alternating between huddling by my meager fire and pacing back and forth to stay awake and warm.  As day 3 began to come to an end, with the sun starting to set behind the towering trees on the ridge line above me, I began preparing for another cold night in the forest. As I did the previous 2 nights, I wrapped myself up in all my clothes and my emergency blanket, to include taking my red backpack off its frame to act as extra insulation around my waist to help me keep my core body heat in. As I crouched on the ground, getting my fire pit area set up for the evening, I heard the helicopter. I had planned for this event, and I was ready. I jumped up from my fire area pulling my emergency mirror out of my fanny pack. I grabbed my bright red backpack and climbed to up to the top of the tallest boulder in the middle of the island. As the helicopter broke over the tree line, I began to whistle as loud as I could, at the same time I flashed my emergency mirror/LED light in one hand and frantically waved my backpack in the other. As they passed over the side of the clearing and started to fly behind me, I was certain that they had not seen me. My hopes began to drop. But then, the helicopter stopped, hovered, and began to reverse back over to the center of the clearing. It stopped dead center over me. I was found. That is the exact moment when 3 days of no sleep, terror, and physical exhaustion all hit me like a ton of bricks. I had not felt any of my scrapes, cuts, bruises, soreness, exhaustion and mental injury until that moment. My legs buckled and I crumpled into a ball on that boulder and cried for the first time in 3 days.

About the author

Stephanie Lincoln is an Army Veteran, an online Fitness and Nutrition Coach and a soon to be published author. She and her husband, Brad have been traveling full time in their Class A Motorcoach since June 2019. They also travel with one cat, Buddy and three dogs, Molly, Boca and Maximus. Stephanie is publishing a book later in 2022 entitled, “Born to Be Brave”, a memoir about her experience being lost alone for 60 hours while hiking in the Olympic National Forest.