Posted on 02/11/2016 8:31:39 PM PST by Utilizer
Five harrowing days after becoming stuck on a remote backcountry road in Death Valley National Park in August 2009, Alicia Sanchez lay down next to her Jeep Cherokee and prepared to die.
Then she heard a voice.
"I called as I approached, asking if she was okay," wrote Ranger Amber Nattrass in a park report. "She was waving frantically and screaming, 'My baby is dead, my baby is dead.' "
In the SUV, Nattrass found Sanchez's lifeless 6-year-old son Carlos on the front seat. "She told me they walked 10 miles but couldn't find any help (and) had run out of water and had been drinking their own urine," Nattrass wrote.
"She turned down a wrong road," Nattrass said in a recent interview. "She said she was following her GPS unit."
Danger has long stalked those who venture into California's desert in the heat of summer. But today, with more people pouring into the region, technology and tragedy are mixing in new and unexpected ways.
"It's what I'm beginning to call death by GPS," said Death Valley wilderness coordinator Charlie Callagan. "People are renting vehicles with GPS and they have no idea how it works and they are willing to trust the GPS to lead them into the middle of nowhere."
The number of people visiting Death Valley in the summer, when temperatures often exceed 120 degrees, has soared from 97,000 in 1985 to 257,500 in 2009. That pattern holds at Joshua Tree as well, which recorded 128,000 visitors in the summer of 1988. Last year: 230,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Two different implementations of GPS.
Vehicle navigation systems are only as good as OEM updates of roadway systems. In my dense suburban county new developments are constantly in construction. New roads are built, some old ones get dead ended. The algorithms aren't and can't be 100% accurate 100% of the time. Just as with nautical and air charts one must update street maps and even then it has certain holes. Like spellczech it requires some basic user knowledge.
The handhelds give excellent positional info regardless of roads. Lots of goodies available, waypoint memory, altitude, compass bearing, quad sheet info, etc.
Makes moving about easier, works best as you said in conjunction with paper maps. The old magnetic compasses work only if one knows how to use them.
In any case I use maps before setting out into unknown areas.... there be dragons out there.....
;>)
Boy Scouts provided excellent training. Our Marine scout leader taught us to sketch up our own maps, how to pick landmarks, indicate terrain features, rough elevation guesses, etc, driving the points home with his Korean war experience
We love geocaching. What a great little hobby.
L
if everyone just deleted their gps programs in favor of tinder, there would be more love and less death in the desert... :-)
Morons. A $75 hand held GPS would have guided them out correctly. At least kept them from walking in the wrong direction. I would never use a vehicle affixed GPS. Its totally reliant on the vehicle.
Maps can be wrong too... People have been winding up lost long before technology.
She was in San Bernadino County. Supposedly 20 miles east of Trono. That puts her no more than 20 miles from the nearest Interstate. With a hand held GPS she would have been out in 8 hours of walking. That is worst case. But most likely she was only 10 miles north of Interstate 15.
And, a map is only helpful if you know where you are.
So GPS is related to HAL? "Turn right, Dave."
It’s a very sad story indeed. :-( I’ve noticed that vehicle type GPS units are sorely lacking. As you know, I’m on a search team and we use the ones that actually give you USEFUL information... such as WHERE YOU ARE AT!!! ...in both Lat/Lon, and UTM. Vehicle GPS units simply show you a picture of the road and tell you where you’re going and people trust it!...and DIE because of it. But even people like us who end up out in the middle of nowhere looking for a lost person don’t entirely rely on GPS. We DO indeed have MAPS and GOOD compasses!... plus, we KNOW how to find Polaris (on a clear night). Land navigation is a good skill to have. :-)
Lol. I can see how that would be a problem.
Exactly. Vehicle GPS’s suck once you are off the main road anywhere. I spent two days under a disabled vehicle in Death Valley in 1976. No biggie. We had plenty of food and water and had a travel plan noted with my parental unit. We knew exactly where we were and eventually got the truck running and drove out. Met the ranger on the way out that was looking for us. Pre-GPS and some map reading required.
I can read a map and I can tell when the GPS is sending me in the wrong direction. In my car is a delorme map for every contiguous state and province. Also a compass.
totally shamed....lol
I have run across very few mistakes in maps. That said I have had some real dangerous ones in USGS maps. Mostly in old ones and typically it is clear that when they were made in the last century no one actually went a looked at the area, they just drew what they thought it looked like. I do submit the errors to USGS but they rarely update maps.
totally shamed....lol
Yes, women generally do not have the innate sense of direction men do. When women give directions it is left-right, not north-south and tend to get lost more than men. Must be from out Neanderthal days when we were hunter/gatherers.
Ironically, when I fly I still use the old fashioned sectional aeronautical charts. Don’t even know how to use the “new” electronics like Ipads and cell phones.
Don’t like battery powered rifle scopes either.
No kidding.
Boy Scouts still teach boys map reading and navigation. We were involved with scouting for over 20 years until they went queer and then we all dropped our memberships, including my Eagle Scout sons.
I, on the other hand, get totally lost trying to get to my bathroom.
I now just poop in the bed. I figure I’ll clean it up later. Or not.
I have run across dozens if not hundreds of mistakes on maps in my lifetime, fortunately have been in situations that are life threatening.
I agree with the cautionary tale of not going into places like Death Valley relying simply on a rented cars GPS, but maps are no guarantee of accuracy. If anything the fact that GPS’s exist probably has helped make most maps more accurate as now there are millions of people daily using the data, and money to be made by making sure the data is accurate.
I have seen a huge improvement in map data in the last 10 years myself, because now they actually have folks walking and or driving the actual roads every few years validating the data that was on some survey map from 50 or 75 years ago is actually correct... often it was not. Paper streets, one ways, legal streets that are steps, etc etc... all of which 10 years ago would just show up as a road on a map but be incorrect or impassible by vehicle, and sometiems even by walking a paper street that never was finished which is now woods. etc etc.
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