Trust your GPS?

#1
superdave1984

superdave1984

Repeat Offender
Joined
Aug 14, 2007
Messages
9,445
Likes
6,986
#1
Convoy rescued after GPS led them to Utah cliff - Yahoo! News

Tue Aug 5, 9:27 PM ET

CANNONVILLE, Utah - A GPS device led a convoy of tourists astray, finally stranding them on the edge of a sheer cliff.

With little food or water, the group of 10 children and 16 adults from California had to spend a night in their cars deep inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

They used a global positioning device to plot out a backcountry route Saturday from Bryce Canyon National Park to the Grand Canyon.

But the device couldn't tell how rough the roads were. One vehicle got stuck in soft sand, two others ran low on fuel. And the device offered suggestions that led them onto the wrong dirt roads, which ended at a series of cliffs.

The group was so lost it couldn't figure out how to backtrack and started to panic. Kids were crying, and one infant was sick with fever, according to a member of the party.

"It was a nightmare — the vacation from hell," Daniel Cohen, back home safely in Los Angeles, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "That's a story I will tell my kids. For now, I don't want anybody to know about it."

From Grosvenor Arch, where the travelers stopped, they should have taken the better-traveled Cottonwood Canyon Road. Instead, they took Four Mile Bench Road, which takes a meandering southeasterly path. Chief Deputy Tracy Glover said the convoy took one wrong turn after another onto a succession of lesser dirt paths that are barely passable in the best of weather. They finally ended so some 25 miles from Grosvenor Arch near Tibbet Canyon.

"They just kept driving and driving and driving," Glover told the AP.

Cohen said the group had no idea it was setting off in the wrong direction.

"A friend with navigation device said we should go that way, and we all went that went," he said. "I had no clue where we were, I can tell you that. But the next day when we saw the airplane, we were jumping."

Glover said a GPS device is no substitute for good judgment or detailed topographical maps.

"People can start down a nice, graded dirt road and it can soon turn into boulders and deep washes, but they continue driving instead of turning around. I don't understand it," Glover told The Salt Lake Tribune. "The shortest way is not always the quickest way."

It took a lot of back-and-forth cell phone calls, but sheriff's deputies were able to find the group Sunday and lead them back out to Cannonville.

It wasn't the first time Staircase visitors have wandered into near oblivion. Dozens have been stranded since the monument was created in 1996, often with the false encouragement of a GPS device, said Bureau of Land Management spokesman Larry Crutchfield.

A group of Belgium tourists had to lick condensation off their minivan's windshield for water after being stranded on Four Mile Bench in May 2007. Riders on all-terrain vehicles stumbled across the group.

In the same country in early March 2003, a South African man living in London and his Quincy, Mass., girlfriend were stranded for six days by a powerful snowstorm.

Rachel Crowley, 27, died four miles after setting out from their buried rental Jeep. A cattle rancher found George Metcalfe, 27, staggering 15 miles away on Four Mile Bench Road. He survived.
Click to expand...
 
#4
#4
I had myself several episodes of LBS syndrome from relying too heavily on my nav systems while flying.
 
#5
#5
They used a global positioning device to plot out a backcountry route Saturday from Bryce Canyon National Park to the Grand Canyon.
Click to expand...

This sentence right here is enough to know that you're dealing with a Darwinian situation.
 
#7
#7
Yep. We prop up what ought to be our culls.

I run into guys in the backcountry pretty frequently who are carrying a GPS but literally do not know which way is east and which is west. People seem to think having one obviates the need for basic mountaineering and outdoor skills. I carry one too, and it's a fun and useful tool, but I'd never trust my life to a $300 device like a lot of people seem to think you can do.
 
#9
#9
Mine either. I'd look pretty damn closely at an actual paper map before I followed it down a dirt road shortcut in that part of the country, though. Especially with 30 people in tow.
 
#10
#10
This story left out two important details, the amount of marijuana smoked and the amount of alcohol consumed.
 
#11
#11
a good map and a lensatic compass is all you need. We're becoming too dependent on technology. Things like On-star, daytime running lamps, and GPS are becoming crutches that do our thinking for us.
 
#12
#12
MG1968 said:
a good map and a lensatic compass is all you need. We're becoming too dependent on technology. Things like On-star, daytime running lamps, and GPS are becoming crutches that do our thinking for us.
Click to expand...

I carry a GPS unit when I'm backpacking because when I get home it's fun to plot my hike in Google Earth. That's about the only reason. I still carry the same maps, compass, etc. that I would've 20 years ago. I may not pull them out, thanks to the GPS, but I've got them with me.

Basically, if it has an on/off switch, I don't count on it.
 
#13
#13
Chemvol said:
QFT. Nothing wrong w/ the old-fashioned way.
Click to expand...

This cannot be stated too often. I have no desire or plans of buying any GPS systems for my car or my person. Maps, compass and the sun should be all the direction tools you need. How did they do it 100 years ago?
 
#14
#14
A little common sense can do wonders for you. Even as much as I use my GPS, I always have a map somewhere in the car just in case.
 
#15
#15
Bah. Who needs their fancy GPS machines and their fancy compasses and fancy maps with their fancy accurate indications of where you were. Back in my day, we looked at the stars and we got lost and fell off a cliff and shattered our legs and burst our kidneys...and we loved it!
 
#17
#17
And who needs this new fangled internet thing. When I was a young pup, we used runners to get our messages there, then transitioned to horse riders. I don't understand these kids and their fascination with technology. We did just fine back in the day.
 
New Posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

Advertisement



Back
Top