T he route up the Widowmaker Arete, a 1,700-foot wall in British Columbia, is deceptively described as “mostly easy slab climbing”, interspersed with “short steep sections that can include finger cracks, blocky face climbing”. It requires careful planning, and the right equipment.
When 16-year-old Bryce Vincent Gowryluk found himself facing its sheer headwall last week, he had neither. He did, however, ask the AI chatbot Claude for directions.
Last week, Gowryluk had to be rescued after those directions proved wildly incorrect, in the latest incident to raise questions about the growing reliance on digital maps for wilderness navigation.
On Saturday morning, Gowryluk took a gondola up to the top of Grouse Mountain and, while ascending, asked Claude to plan a route to nearby Crown Mountain and back. After navigating scree and more than 2,000ft of elevation gain, the summit promises 360-degree panoramic views of Greater Vancouver, the Fraser valley and the Capilano watershed.
Typically, the trek takes eight hours and hiking guides warn it is not for beginners.
As Gowryluk, a keen indoor climber, navigated down the Crown Pass and up through Crater Slabs and into a boulder-strewn valley, the directions from Claude took him away from the planned course.
He found himself at the final headwall of the Widowmaker Arete – a climb that requires ropes, cameras and a clear plan for ascent. As he climbed, Gowryluk soon realized the terrain was far too steep and that he was stuck at the base of a cliff. He phoned his mother, then called emergency services for help.
Police notified North Shore Rescue, which sent a helicopter, but Gowryluk was too close to the rock face for the rotors, so two members of the rescue team were hoisted down to lift him up. He was flown to the rescue base near the Cleveland Dam.
In their debrief the rescue crew said Gowryluk was “far off” his intended route. While the incident is believed to be the first time a hiker has been lost because of AI, it is the latest in a string of mishaps in the mountainous region of south-western British Columbia, where hikers increasingly rely on imprecise mapping directions.
In July, three people were rescued after they planned a route on the Howe Sound Crest Trail using Google Maps, which gave them wildly inaccurate time estimates, suggesting a route that often takes as long as 14 hours could be done in just over five.
Search manager Paul Markey told North Shore News that hikers and mountaineers should not follow the directions of artificial intelligence when mapping their routes because those systems lack spatial awareness and the advantage of prior experience.
“You can’t just blindly follow what AI is proposing to you,” he said. “You need to question the information and just see whether it makes sense or not.”
