Hikers follow Google Maps during their outings, but the application makes them follow a ghost path. Emergency services had to intervene several times to recover them.
The Google Maps navigation app has certainly saved your day several times. Whether during a car journey, to find the location of a meeting on foot or even during a tourist visit. Generally, the system works perfectly, to the point that some people use it to follow their nature hiking route. But by trusting technology too much, we can find ourselves in a dangerous situation.
This is what happened to two Canadian hikers recently in British Columbia. Last September, one of them decided to go to Mount Fromme, which overlooks the city of Vancouver. Everything is going well, man follows Google Maps to find his way. After a while, he stops and calls for help: the walker has just realized thathe is on a cliff and doesn’t know how long he can last. At the beginning of November, in the same region, another hiker lost on the back side of the mountain must be repatriated by helicopter. He also used Google Maps to find his way.
Hikers follow Google Maps but the app makes them take paths that don’t exist
In either case, the track followed on the navigation application did not exist, even if it was visible on the smartphone. Rescue teams requested the ghost path removal, which was done within 48 hours. It is unclear why he was present at the base. The North Shore Rescue group warns that it is “simply not appropriate” to use apps like Google Maps to navigate in the wilderness. On the other hand, those which are specialized in hiking remain reliable.
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This is not the first time that such an incident has happened. In July 2021, mountaineers warned walkers that Google Maps could lead them to “potentially deadly” trails on Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Britain. There too, the Mountain View firm quickly corrected the situation by removing erroneous information from its application.
Source: The New York Times