Teen Hiker’s AI Route Plan in Vancouver Goes Spectacularly Wrong

The teen was stuck on the mountain for three hours.

A 16-year-old hiker who used AI to map out a route up Crown Mountain in Vancouver was left stranded on a cliff on Saturday before North Shore Rescue volunteers hoisted him to safety. The teen set out from Grouse Mountain at around 8 a.m., following an AI-generated route that was supposed to climb the mountain through a gully. Instead, the route led him onto steep, technical rock-climbing terrain, leaving him trapped at the base of a cliff. Rescuers were alerted just before 3:30 p.m., locating the teen by phone before sending two technicians down by helicopter. They lifted him into the aircraft and flew him to the team’s base near Cleveland Dam. The rescue ended shortly before 6:30 p.m. “The boy was very scared. He definitely feared for his life,” search manager Paul Markey told North Shore News. Markey urged hikers not to blindly trust AI for navigation, saying the technology can generate routes that do not reflect real-world terrain. “It put him into a situation which was beyond his abilities, so things could have gone sideways pretty quickly,” he said.