Another near death by GPS story
LA Times What the heck they thought they were doing out there is a mystery. 67 is that road into the park from Jacob Lake that is closed all winter. But they blindly followed the GPS down a dirt ro...
Forum Discussion
In this situation, the people used their GPS system to find an alternate route into the Park. Most media reports that they were in a car.
If they had checked out their GPS before embarking from Las Vegas or had looked online with their phones, they would have found that the roads were closed as are any facilities at the North Rim. This was just a huge error in judgement and they never should have tried to reach that destination.
Their ordeal was further complicated by the wishes of one vehicle occupant to strike out blindly and start an arduous trek through deep snow. There were a number of better choices to be made like digging the car out of the deep snow, turning around and exiting the way they came. They also could have chosen to make small forays to a spot where their phones worked. This latter strategy was eventually the initiator for the rescue of the trekker.
This woman had limited survival skills. She lost one of her shoes and didn't recover it. She reached a cabin, eventually but didn't want to/didn't think it was necessary to start a fire in the cabin's wood stove. One article said she had stripped off her wet clothing and was curled up on the bed, still not starting a fire in the stove. She must have been dehydrated from her trek but didn't think to melt snow to rehydrate. A lot of errors all around in the way she handled this situation.
Maybe this story will deter some other people with no wilderness experience or limited decision making skills but I doubt it. The fact that they have rescue teams on standby tells me the unskilled will keep up their stupidity, GPS enabled or not.
If they had checked out their GPS before embarking from Las Vegas or had looked online with their phones, they would have found that the roads were closed as are any facilities at the North Rim. This was just a huge error in judgement and they never should have tried to reach that destination.
Their ordeal was further complicated by the wishes of one vehicle occupant to strike out blindly and start an arduous trek through deep snow. There were a number of better choices to be made like digging the car out of the deep snow, turning around and exiting the way they came. They also could have chosen to make small forays to a spot where their phones worked. This latter strategy was eventually the initiator for the rescue of the trekker.
This woman had limited survival skills. She lost one of her shoes and didn't recover it. She reached a cabin, eventually but didn't want to/didn't think it was necessary to start a fire in the cabin's wood stove. One article said she had stripped off her wet clothing and was curled up on the bed, still not starting a fire in the stove. She must have been dehydrated from her trek but didn't think to melt snow to rehydrate. A lot of errors all around in the way she handled this situation.
Maybe this story will deter some other people with no wilderness experience or limited decision making skills but I doubt it. The fact that they have rescue teams on standby tells me the unskilled will keep up their stupidity, GPS enabled or not.
