A hiker is lost in a forest of unknown shape. What is a good path for the hiker to follow in order to escape from the forest within a reasonable amount of time? The hiker's dilemma clearly is: Should one start exploring the area close-by and expand the search radii gradually? Or should one rather pick some direction and run straight on?

We employ a competitive analysis to prove that a certain spiral strategy achieves a reasonable competitive factor for the case where the forest has a non-empty kernel; moreover, if the hiker's unknown starting position lies in the kernel of the forest, this strategy is (almost) optimal w.r.t. the competitive factor. As a basis for our competitive analysis, we introduce a new measure of intrinsic complexity for instances of this escape problem, which we compare to several known shortest escape paths.

徒步旅行者迷失在未知形状的森林中。远足者在合理的时间内逃离森林的最佳途径是什么？徒步旅行者的困境显然是：一个人应该开始探索附近区域并逐渐扩大搜索半径吗？还是应该选择某个方向并继续前进？

我们通过竞争分析来证明对于森林具有非空核的情况，某种螺旋策略可以实现合理的竞争因素。此外，如果徒步旅行者的未知起始位置位于森林的内核中，则该策略（几乎）是竞争因素的最佳选择。作为我们竞争分析的基础，我们针对这种逃生问题的实例引入了一种新的内在复杂性度量，将其与几种已知的最短逃生路径进行了比较。