Someone getting lost in the wilderness is practically a daily occurrence it seems. Someone wanders off the trail, they get separated from their group, and the next thing you know, a massive search is underway trying to discover just where the directionally-challenged hiker ended up. It's not even all that uncommon for a pair of backpackers to get confused as to where they are at, but usually in larger groups, someone can determine their position and figure out how to find their way home.
This apparently wasn't the case for a group of climbers in China calling themselves the "Wind Runners". It seems that the group used the Internet to loosely organize an outing into a remote region on the border of "Huiyang Lovers’ Valley and Pingshan Moutain in the Longgang district. The group rented two busses and drove out to a site where they intended to go climbing, and eventually they got lost due to darkness according to this story from the the Shenzhen Post.
When the call came in for help, the local search and rescue team went into action, sending 230 people out to find the Wind Runners. It took them four hours to reach them and bring them safely back to civilization, and no one was hurt in the process. The SAR team had food and water waiting for the lost climbers.
So, let me get this straight. 104 "climbers" go out into the backcountry together, and no a single one of them thought to bring a headlamp? Really? Maybe we should introduce this hiking group to the ten essentials. Most of which they could pick up over at Backcountry.com, where coincidently enough I first read about this story on The Goat Blog. (Nice segue huh?)
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