Man, that was close.
Yesterday I'm out on Seymour with my 12yo and dog. Park at Buck, up PL and GSM to BP. My usual ride is down Severed and I don't really know much else out that way (I'm on Cypress or Fromme mostly), but in my wisdom, I decide that Asian Adonis is probably a better choice for the boy. No sweat, I know where it is. NOPE. We turned first right instead of 2nd right to CBuster to AA, and ended up in uncharted territory for me. No problem, talked to someone and I changed the plan to Forever After, which was awesome. Pouring rain. 5 degrees and by the time we were down that we were soaked and getting cold. Turn left on Bridal Path and back to Old Buck.
We got F'ing lost. The touchscreen on my phone wouldn't work because of the water so everytime I tried to confirm what trail we were on via offline trailforks app, it was on no use. So even though we were not far from neighbourhoods, we may as well have been miles as I didn't know where anything was. We were starting to loose light and around 3:30 it was not looking good with no idea which way to go while cold and getting poured on.
Ended up finding our way into a neighbourhood, calling a cab (they couldn't come) and asking someone for directions. The directions back to Old Buck brought us back into the woods and was a decision that I wasn't sure was the right one. Got a bit lost again, but back-tracked and found our way to the golf course - which was like the yellow brick road back to the car. 15 or 20 minutes later and the forest would have been too dark, and we were freezing.
Looking back at our GPS track I can see where we made our directional mistakes but it goes to show you how easily getting lost can happen.
Ive made new rules!!!!