Posted on 11/12/2023 11:49:40 AM PST by george76
Maybe this hiker should have Googled where he could buy a paper map.
A hiker had to be rescued via helicopter in British Columbia after he got lost — because he followed a made-up trail on Google Maps.
It was the second time in two months that a hiker got lost relying on the high-tech map app
...
stranded on a cliff on the backside of Mt. Fromme, just north of Vancouver, after attempting to reach the peak’s summit.
A pair of rescuers were brought in by air and dropped into the heavily forested area during the Nov. 4 rescue.
After locating the lost hiker, who according to NSR had minimal gear, no flashlight and poor footwear for his trek, the rescuers brought him down to an area where the helicopter could retrieve the trio.
NSR said the rescue was the second in two months for hikers trapped on Mt. Fromme, both of which appeared to be the result of people following the fake trail displayed on Google Maps.
... NSR advised would-be hikers to avoid using Google Maps for hiking and instead use apps designed for the outdoors like CalTopo or Gaia or a paper map and compass.
It also insisted people who rely on phones for hiking navigation pack a backup battery, and that they research areas where they plan to hike to make sure they know the terrain and if trails are even available.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
During a vacation in Panama Google Maps frequently instructed us to turn so that we’d go off a cliff, or end us up in somebody’s backyard. Based on that experience (and a few rural adventure drives stateside) it’s my personal opinion that outside well settled areas, or the USA, it’s all but useless and can be dangerous to trust.
The story says he was stranded on a cliff, so to me it’s reasonable to think it was a case of climbing to a point where he could neither continue nor retreat.
I don’t even trust google maps...
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“I don’t even trust google....”
There... fixed it for you. You weren’t quite inclusive enough...
There are a lot of Class VI roads in my town.
Visitors came from Ireland, rented a car in Boston, and called us tilted 45 degrees stuck on a boulder on the back side of a “mountain” (big hill).
They DID follow the shortest route.
Or the trail never existed and was added to the map to detect copyright infringement.
Adding bogus streets and nonexistent towns to copyrighted maps is a long tradition...
Darks knows a bit about that...
I wonder if any younger hiker or backpacker knows what magnetic declination is? I went to an REI outdoor store on a trip out west and asked for the topo maps of the area. The staff was completely ignorant of what they were and all they could show me were portable GPS devices.
Google maps sent a few tour buses up our private road and then we put up a gate. That fixed the problem.
Use Google Maps for researching places to go but DO NOT use Google Maps to get there.
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Good advice!
Years ago, I had a friend who was filling up at a gas station in Jacob Lake on 89A... this is 45 miles due north of the North Rim Entrance for the Grand Canyon. While at the gas pump, he was approached by a couple of tourists... turns out they started out in Phoenix early in the day and wanted to see the Grand Canyon and had faithfully followed their GPS instructions up to that point. They got to the gas station and found that the access from the north side of the Grand Canyon is closed in winter. This minor detail works out to be about an extra 350 miles of driving by the time they got to the south side....
Map makers used to deliberately insert small errors or nonexistent towns or something, so they could quickly tell if some competing atlas company was stealing their work.
Luckily, the rescuers found these people before the grizzly bears did. The lesson to be learned here is simple: trust not Big Tech, especially about stolen elections.
Canada probably has the same roadless policy that Obama instituted in the Pacific Northwest. Except BC still has logging, so maybe not. Maybe it was just an abandoned logging trail.
I probably would have come by a few decades later and found your bones. ( hey there’s Freeper Ruy, no wonder he’s not posting anymore-lol). :)
New Mexico outdoors is still nice. It’s the people and cities that went downhill.
A few hundred yards from where I live in the desert - New Mexico/Arizona border, four corners, google maps says there’s a trail at the bottom of a canyon. In reality it’s a dry wash full of rocks, debris and sand and the flash floods can get really terrible as the rain water flows down from the nearby mountain. Not a paved trail at all but looks that way on google maps.
Google maps is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Charge him the costs of the rescue.
When I derided self driving vehicles here someone replied the tracking for them will be accurate down to millimeters.
My point had been driving in Michigan after an ice storm followed by a large snow storm we can barely see one partially cleared lane after the road crews worked (several hours into the day due to understaffing).
No one can see the right lane or right shoulder where some bus lanes and turn lanes begin and end or curve to approaches of restaurant lots. So how can the driverless car know not to drive at 50 mph and keep going?
Having lived in MI, I know that the right-of-way at a frozen intersection 4-way-stop belongs to the car with the greater momentum. Thus if you are on the lesser street, you need to simmah down and be prepared to yield yield yield. It worked fascinatingly well and I adapted in just a couple of days (we were snow-covered by mid-Oct my first winter there).
And you are right, Musk needs to step up institutional memory AI on regionalities like that.
An accident waiting to happen, in other words. Navigation may be the least of this guy's problems.
Fed Ex sent a 18-wheeler over the “steep, rocky, four-wheel-drive route” that is used to get to Crystal Mill, the famed Colorado landmark..
In 2020, a 30-foot box truck got stuck at nearly 13,000 feet while trying to negotiate the Alpine Loop, which connects Silverton and Lake City..
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/08/29/semi-truck-stuck-county-road-3-crystal-mill/
Google maps are as useful as the warranty on my Zenith.
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