CALIFORNIA — A trio of college students required a rescue from Mount Shasta after they relied on AI to plan a climb that left them without enough food, water, clothing, or reliable navigation.
The climbers started Saturday from the Clear Creek Trailhead and planned to camp before pushing toward the summit early Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Clear Creek offers a nontechnical late-summer route, but the climb covers about 8 miles and gains 6,500 feet.
The U.S. Forest Service warns that Clear Creek has no established trail to the summit, making route-finding essential.
The students followed a suggested route displayed in the AllTrails app as though it marked an established trail, according to the Chronicle.
They reached the summit Sunday evening, hours after the recommended midafternoon turnaround time.
Their navigation phone died during the descent, and their backup power bank failed to connect. The climbers strayed from the route, called for help, and spent the night exposed on the mountain.
Rangers found them Monday morning exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. They had camped in a prohibited area near a freshwater spring and left food scraps and trash behind, the Chronicle reported.
The climbers later acknowledged their mistake.
"We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking," they told rangers, according to the Chronicle.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office called their dependence on Google Gemini, YouTube, and AllTrails a "critical misstep." The agency advises Mount Shasta climbers to prepare for rapidly changing conditions, register their routes, carry emergency equipment, and tell others when they expect to return.
The rescue followed two other incidents involving AI-generated wilderness guidance near Mount Shasta, the Chronicle reported.
Rangers found a woman camping in a prohibited area after ChatGPT reportedly directed her there, and another hiker carried an AI-generated map containing inaccurate routes and place names.
"This is the first year where we've started to have some AI fallout," Forest Service climbing ranger Nick Meyers told the Chronicle.
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