I No Longer Feel Sorry For Idiots Who Use Google Maps & Get Stranded On Mountains

Society, we need to have a chat.

I'm starting to run out of patience with you, especially the hikers who keep using Google Maps to navigate around the Mount Fromme area in British Columbia where we're up to three rescues in the Kennedy Falls area where morons keep getting stranded even as the local rescue team pleads with idiots to stop trusting Google Maps.

In the latest rescue, two rescue technicians had to be dropped into a tricky area with a low cloud ceiling and a tree canopy where the stranded hiker was located.

Do not take this hike if it shows up on Google maps! / North Shore Rescue / Facebook

According to the North Shore Rescue team in a Facebook post:

Late Saturday afternoon, NSR helicopter and rope rescue teams responded for a hiker stranded on a cliff on the backside of Fromme. This is the third rescue NSR has conducted in this area - the last being just over a month ago:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php/?id=100064949551454&story_fbid=689711333203846

This individual had attempted to climb Fromme from the Kennedy Falls area.

As with the previous rescue noted above, this current individual may have sought to follow a trail on Google Maps that does not exist. NSR has attempted to contact Google to have this non existent trail (north of Fromme, going towards the vicinity of Kennedy Falls) removed, however we have not received any response.

To be clear, the area in question has no trails and is very steep with many cliff bands throughout. In the preceding weeks, NSR has actually placed signage in the area warning of this. The area is clearly dangerous, as it was the sight of a previous fatality.

By the next day, North Shore was assured by Google that the trail listed on its app had been removed, but the damage has been done. That's three rescues that put the North Shore Rescue teams in danger as they extracted the moron hikers that trusted a phone app with their lives.

When are you idiots going to learn? You didn't learn after a Russian scientist fell 500 feet to his death after trusting a hiking app only to hike off a cliff. You didn't listen in 2021 when the John Muir Trust told people to stop trusting Google Maps with their lives. Iceland Magazine tried to warn hikers not to trust Google Maps in 2019.

Yet here we are with multiple cases in the same place in Canada and people just keep getting stranded. Do they even Google the trail they're about to hike? Apparently not.

Here's the solution:

Look, I'm all out of thoughts and prayers here.

I get that you want the Instagram content that comes along with some off-the-beaten-path trail that Google swears will lead to insane content, bro. I get that the TikTok video will do huge numbers because so few people have been into this area.

Don't care. Hike the trail. Get stuck. See if I show any emotions.

Those of us in society who can follow the rules have to fight back.

New rule: If someone doesn't follow the directions as attached to a tree by hiker Douglas Pope, then they can go through the four-step process above. Good luck.