Google Gemini helped shape a Mount Shasta hike that ended in a rescue

A tool people already trust

“People often come to us unprepared or without researching the route at all. These guys deserve credit: at least they tried,” said Nick Meyers, who leads the U.S. Forest Service program at Mount Shasta’s wilderness safety and avalanche center. The center took part in the rescue. Meyers said the hikers had, at some point, stopped thinking for themselves.

They are not the only visitors making mistakes outdoors with AI. Meyers said another woman pitched her tent beside a “No Camping” sign and insisted she was allowed to be there because AI had told her so. His team also met a man at a trailhead with an AI-generated map that put prominent landmarks on the wrong side of a neighboring mountain.

In British Columbia, a helicopter team rescued a 16-year-old from a ledge on the Widowmaker route on the north face of Mount Crown. He had used Anthropic’s Claude to plan the hike. The story spread across Canada and the United States, although the teenager later said he had also used Google Maps and the popular hiking app AllTrails.

AI use is spreading faster than the evidence about its consequences. Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming has seen the share of visitors who say they use AI for hiking information rise from zero to 26% over the past year, park superintendent Chip Jenkins said. He expects that share to keep growing.

Meyers said it is not yet clear whether wider use of AI will mean more incidents in remote areas and more rescue missions. His office covers a vast area of wilderness in Northern California and averages about 12 rescues a year. So far, 2026 looks typical.

Wyoming has seen fewer rescue calls than last year: 312 so far in 2026, compared with 466 in all of 2025 and 377 in 2024.

The hazard is confidence

Some experienced rescuers see chatbots as the latest in a line of tools that people can use to get into trouble. About a decade ago, hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts began turning to Instagram and other social platforms for destinations, ideas and information; sometimes the results were deadly. Before that, Google Maps and reliance on smartphones could lead people astray.

“The media have spent the past two decades actively encouraging people to spend more time outdoors. As a result, more people really have gone outdoors,” said Jim Moss, a Colorado attorney specializing in outdoor recreation and a volunteer search-and-rescue worker. How dubious advice from chatbots will affect those visitors remains unclear, he added.

The distinctive risk, according to Chris Flatmann, a professor of human-centered computing at Clemson University in South Carolina who studies AI and search-and-rescue operations, is that chatbots can present false information as fact while sounding convincing. Their use can also lead to what researchers call “cognitive surrender”: people become so absorbed in interacting with AI that they stop thinking critically on their own.

That is especially dangerous when the user knows little about the subject and cannot recognize nonsense, Flatmann said. Once someone stops assessing what is happening, it can be hard to start again — particularly under stress in a remote area.

Chatbots also tend to tell people what they want to hear, confidently, even when their sources are unreliable, Flatmann and other experts said. Claude or ChatGPT may offer detailed instructions that sound plausible but draw on Reddit discussions, outdated YouTube videos or invented information.

TikTok and Instagram can inspire a trip; AI can provide instructions — sound or unsound — while encouraging the user along the way, Flatmann said. AI is not trying to lure people into the mountains, he added, but this is a natural consequence of having such a tool.

I think the most important distinction is not whether a chatbot can sometimes give useful advice. It is that a confident answer can feel like a plan, even when the hiker has no way to check it. Before heading somewhere unfamiliar, experts recommend verifying information against current maps and official sources, such as government agencies that manage public lands, hiking associations and guidebooks. Better still, talk to an actual guide, national forest employee or park ranger.

“If you’re going into places where you can die, take the preparation seriously,” Meyers said.