AI Trip Plan Strands Three on Mount Shasta
AI Trip Plan Strands Three on Mount Shasta
The News
Three men from Roseville, California, had to be rescued off Mount Shasta after planning their climb with Google's Gemini AI assistant, which the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office called a "critical misstep."
The hikers told rangers they leaned on Gemini for information about the Clear Creek Route and for advice on what to pack. Authorities said the assistant recommended less food and water than the group needed for what was billed as an eight-hour climb.
It took them 16 hours. They got lost descending in the dark, one man hurt his knee, their phone died, and they spent the night stranded in a steep drainage until U.S. Forest Service climbing rangers reached them the next morning.
What the Group Told Rangers
"We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking," the group told rangers, according to the Forest Service.
Timeline
The three 20-year-old men, described by the Forest Service as "novice climbers," set out on the Clear Creek Route and made camp at about 8,400 feet. The Forest Service said the base camp was at a prohibited site.
The group leaves for the summit with daypacks, carrying food and water for an eight-hour hike.
The sheriff's office's recommended turnaround time passes. The group keeps climbing.
They reach the 14,179-foot summit, 16 hours after setting out.
Having lost the route, the group calls Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office dispatch for directions, then wanders off the Clear Creek Route into Mud Creek Canyon.
One hiker falls and injures his knee. The cellphone they had been using to navigate dies. Unable to continue, the men make a rough camp in the canyon's steep drainage without adequate food, water or equipment.
Forest Service climbing rangers reach the party and help them down. The climbers get medical aid, Siskiyou County Search and Rescue volunteers respond, and everyone returns to the trailhead without further incident.
Reactions
The Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office called the hikers' reliance on AI a "critical misstep" and told climbers to get their information directly from local authorities before going up Mount Shasta. Officials said hikers should "never rely solely on AI for your trip planning."
Nick Meyers, lead climbing ranger for the Forest Service on Mount Shasta and director of the Mount Shasta Avalanche Center, said AI was not the "nail in the coffin" here — the group made a string of mistakes that added up. The roughly eight-hour estimate they got was not far off, he said, but they hiked much slower than that, packed for the estimate rather than the reality, and blew past the noon turnaround.
"AI can be a great tool," Meyers said. "But it's not the only tool in the toolbox."
Google did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. The company says on its website that Gemini can make mistakes and hallucinate and that users should double-check its answers.
What's Next
Rangers are pushing the basics ahead of the rest of the climbing season: call or visit the Mount Shasta Ranger Station before a trip, use more than one navigation method, stop regularly to confirm you are still on route, and turn around by noon if you have not summited.
The sheriff's office warned that serious accidents and deaths have happened when climbers lose the Clear Creek Route and drop into more dangerous terrain, including the Mud Creek drainage.
Meyers's advice for hikers using chatbots: find a mentor, talk to real people, and "fact-check yourself a little bit."
More
Meyers, who has worked in the mountains for more than 20 years, said this is a new pattern in 2026 — at least three mishaps this year involving hikers or campers led astray by AI or leaning on it too hard.
In one case, he said, a woman set up camp in a clearly marked no-camping area. When rangers told her she could not stay, he said she answered, "Well, ChatGPT told me I could camp here."
In another, a man showed rangers an AI-generated map of a hiking loop he planned to take. "The map was terrible, totally terrible," Meyers said. "It had features that were on complete wrong sides of the mountain."
OpenAI says on its website that ChatGPT can be wrong and may answer confidently "even when it's wrong," and advises using it "as a first draft, not a final source."
The group on Shasta also used YouTube and the AllTrails app to plan the climb, authorities said. Mount Shasta is a stratovolcano in the Cascade Range and California's fifth-highest peak, rising more than 14,000 feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
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