Always Get Back to the Car

The Adirondacks are a special place.

Hiking, in particular, is my favorite part of visiting America’s largest park.

The journey up one of the Adirondack “High Peaks” is grueling but rewarding. Sitting on the summit is a beautiful thing. You’ve never had a better peanut butter & jelly sandwich than when gazing out over the High Peaks, with miles of ascent behind you (and miles of descent ahead).

But these hikes aren’t without their risks. Injury, exhaustion, dehydration. Heck – how about the fact that you’re hiking 5+ miles out into the wilderness, where it’s damn hard for anyone to come save you.

And those risks are, in my opinion, 100x more severe in the winter.

• Slips and falls.
• Exposure to the elements (hypothermia, frostbite)
• Navigation errors, losing the trail, and shortened daylight.
• Dehydration, exhaustion, calorie deficit.
• And then, when something bad does happen…isolation and delayed rescue.

Tragedy Strikes

Another Adirondack hiking tragedy occurred this past weekend.

A 21-year old hiker slipped off the trail near the summit of Mount Marcy (the highest peak in New York state). She struggled to find her way back to the trail. It was near zero degrees Fahrenheit.

She called 911 around 3:00pm (and got through to them, which is not guaranteed so far from cell service). Forest Rangers flew a helicopter up to her likely location, but Mount Marcy was “socked in” by cloud cover. They couldn’t see her, and there’s no safe way to land.

So another Ranger set out from “base camp” and hiked ~7 miles up to her location. The ranger located her at 9:50pm.

She had already succumbed to hypothermia.

“Always Get Back to the Car”

Hiker deaths are always sobering reminders for me. Mother Nature is ruthless out there, and it’s not guaranteed that someone can save you. I’ve walked those same trails she walked. There’s a “it could have been me” feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Every time there’s a major rescue, injury, or death in the Adirondacks, I think back to what one of my hiking mentors once told me,

“The most important rule of hiking is, ‘Always get back to the car.’

It sounds pithy. And, after a hiker’s death, perhaps even a little crass. But there’s a lot of power in that simple idea.

With every step a hiker takes, they need to consider…“Am I at risk of not getting back to my car in the hiker parking lot, where the trail starts?“

Sometimes it’s one big thing that goes wrong. You trip on a stick and break your leg. Ok – hard to see that one coming.

Usually, though, it’s many small things that add up and compound negatively. For this young woman’s death last weekend, the details are still coming out.

Please know – this is not Monday-morning quarterbacking. This is learning from a sad cautionary tale. Many fatal accidents involve people who were respectful of nature, yet caught in rapid change or a simple misstep that had serious consequences.

Based on the details we do know:

• She was already disoriented from hypothermia when she called 911 at 3:00pm. The question, then, is…when did she first notice how cold she was feeling? And one of the 10 hiker essentials that you always need to bring is “Extra Clothes – sufficient to survive an emergency overnight.” Did she have enough warm clothes?
• She called 911 at 3:00pm. Sunset was around 5:30pm, and she was still likely 4+ hours from hiking back out. Did she know she’d be running out of daylight?
• She lost the trail – an incredibly easy thing to do above treeline, especially in winter and doubly so when socked in by cloud cover. When did she know she had lost the trail? When leaving the tree line, did she check behind her? Did she have a map and a compass in her pack?
• Speaking of cloud cover…did the weather change on her? Mountain weather can change rapidly. Did the weather change around her, and did she notice it?
• She was by herself (with her dog, who survived). Hiking alone is a risk in and of itself. Hiking alone in winter even moreso. Could a partner or group have helped the situation?

It’s saddening to think that any one of these ideas above might have been enough to prevent her death.

In most hiker accidents, there are many compounding factors that decrease someone’s odds of “getting back to the car.” It basically means, “Sometimes, you must turn around and quit before reaching the summit.”

It’s hard, of course, to commit to a big trip to the mountains, to plan, to take time off work, to hike all day, and then decide to turn around before reaching the summit. Who wants to do that?!

But as soon as you feel that “getting back to the car” might be in jeopardy…well, then you might be violating the #1 (!!!) rule of hiking:

“Always get back to the car.“

Invert. Always Invert.

There’s a reason Charlie Munger’s go-to line was, “Invert. Always invert.”

Life (often) becomes simpler when we turn problems inside-out and solve them that way. Munger would say,

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

Ask yourself:

1. What are the worst things that could happen?
2. What would cause those worst things to happen?
3. How do you prevent or negate those causes from taking place?

“Always get back to your car” is a shorthand for this inversion principle, applied to hiking. In one simple statement, we’re forced to think about what could prevent us from returning home and what we must do to avoid a negative outcome.

You’ve Won. Stop Playing.

The investing corollaries that come to my mind are Bill Bernstein’s all-timer:

“If you’ve won the game, it’s ok to stop playing.”

And one of Buffett’s lesser-known, but still powerful, quotes:

“Why risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need?“

In retirement planning, these ideas can our guiding stars.

If your portfolio is bigger than you could possibly spend, do you still need extra exposure to risk?

If the dollars you have are vital to your retirement success, why expose them to any more risk than is necessary?

Would you rather have:

• A perfectly boring investment path that ensures you live the retirement you want? Or…
• A volatile investment path that might 10x your portfolio before death, or might make you bankrupt by age 70?

These aren’t trick questions.

You know your goals. You’ve identified what might lead to failure. Sometimes, the risk is too big and far outweighs any rewards.

Always get back to your car.

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