r/Mountaineering • u/sfgate • 5d ago
Climbers rescued off Shasta told rangers they'd planned the route, food, and timing with Gemini and AllTrails: "We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking"
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/mount-shasta-rescue-ai-22414497.php•
u/BullfrogDelicious157 5d ago
Scary this is becoming a new normality
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u/Sentinel-Wraith 5d ago
There was just another post the other day where someone with no hiking experience trusted AI generated answers to try to climb another cascade volcano.
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u/m3rl0t 5d ago
Had it not been ai, they’d have had some other crutch to lead them.
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u/Working_Grape_4182 5d ago
Sorry but no, we’ve seen so many cases of people who have been egged on and convinced by AI that they can/ should do something that they obviously cannot and should not do.
The programs all work as positive feedback loops and almost never give people any sort of critical feedback or pushback. Hell some teenager was convinced to fucking kill himself by a chatbot last year. It’s not just people looking for any excuse to do things and trusting AI, there are very real cases of people bringing up concerns to chatbots and the program telling the person to basically not worry about it.
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u/Inner-Marionberry-25 4d ago
I haven't used AI much, but every time I have I got annoyed by the first sentance or two:
'What an excellent idea' 'That is a fantastic place to start'
It's fucking irritating
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
I cannot think of anything that could make things worse than a chatbot.
Sure, they could read a blog post by an experienced hiker and think: "If he can do it in eight hours, so can we!" (Very infamous in the German hiking community ... Andy84 and his "easy after-work route" that got a group of about 100 schoolkids up a mountain they couldn't get back down again ... Andy wasn't necessarily at fault, the teacher planning the hike should have realized he was on a hiking platform and Andy was ... a lot more skilled than the average twelve year old.)
Or they could read an old book and choose a trail that's gotten a lot more dangerous lately.
And yes, they could have listened to an asshole who meant them harm or was a total narcissistic idiot, like that poor woman who died on Grossglockner.
But only AI will tell you "That's a GREAT idea, you are sooo smart!" while you are planning to do stupid shit.
If you ask a human, there is some chance they're an idiot or mean you harm, but with AI, the chance it does not know what it is talking about is 100%, because it is an AI. It can get you in trouble even if it uses perfectly correct, well-meaning sources.Anyone getting their info from a static source like a book would (likely) still ask an experienced hiker how much food to pack, etc. and might get better information, then.
Personally, I think they should program AI to not give mountain hiking advice. Or to always caution askers that they need to ask a real person who is knowledgeable.
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5d ago edited 4d ago
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u/harmless_gecko 5d ago
Doing that route in 2 days like they planned is completely reasonable. They just weren't fit & experienced enough
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u/Own-Chemist2228 5d ago
In summer the standard route is not technical, it's just a long slog. Many beginners take two days, but like any popular mountain there are people that jog up it. But 16 hours to the summit is a very slow pace.
Doing it in a day is common. It's a big elevation change and many people are coming from near sea level to do it over a weekend so altitude sickness can be an issue.
Once when I was doing it there was a older man, appeared to be in his 70s or so, that passed us and was moving pretty quickly. He had already summited once that day and was doing another lap.
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u/Kindly-Exchange6059 5d ago
Avalanche is not technical and is the standard winter route. Clear creek is harder because there is no snow
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u/really_tall_horses 4d ago
Huh, I had an extremely similar experience on Shasta in 2014. Wonder if it was the same man.
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u/Own-Chemist2228 4d ago
Could be. He seemed like a local that was just doing a his routine hike. It was pretty amazing.
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u/rocknthenumbers8 5d ago
That route is a talus and scree mess and there is not a maintained trail. I’m guessing just route finding problems and the talus + elevation kicked their asses and slowed em down.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago
Route finding is not an issue with Clear Creek. Although there is no official trail to the summit, this route is so well traveled that the proper route is very apparent.
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u/Electrical_Emu1875 5d ago
This, I think, answers my question, which is, is this a hike or a climb?
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u/theoriginalharbinger 5d ago
The two standard routes on Shasta are typically done as 2-day routes (Avalanche Gulch, Clear Creek). Clear Creek is not a technical route.
Clear Creek, however, poses 4 hurdles. One, it's high altitude. Two, it's primarily scree/talus, and if you do not know how to move on that kind of rock, you're going to be very slow. Three, the last available water is fairly low on the mountain. Four, above mushroom rock there are mild routefinding/scrambling challenges.
Clear Creek can go as a one-day route (I've done it in about 8 or 9 hours).
The individuals who had to be rescued made a series of errors, namely:
- They used Alltrails. Alltrails is good if your route is on-rails. It is not good if you need to pathfind on bare rock. They should have used a proper mapping app (Avenza, OnX, Gaia, CalTopo, whatever) with a GPX track.
- They only had one individual with a navigation device. This has been the root cause of a number of fatalities and deaths (in my home state, a couple experienced heatstroke and death after the one phone with their route on it overheated last year and they were unable to find their way back to the trailhead)
- They did not set a turnaround time or pace. If you are going 400 vertical feet per hour at 12k feet on a 14er, you're looking at 6 hours to actually make the summit. You don't need to set a turnaround time if you can look at your pace and know it's inadequate.
- They started at 3AM and were at 11k at 1PM. The only water source is right around 8,500 vertical feet. If I'm reading this article right, it took them 10 hours to go 2500-3000 feet, or about 400 vertical feet per hour. For comparison reasons, I will usually terminate any 14er hike on non-technical terrain if we can't hit 1k/hour above 10k.
Planning two days for the route is fine. But they should have camped a lot higher and just scrubbed it if they were moving that slowly.
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u/trumpsmellslikcheese 5d ago
The single device thing is a good point; fundamentally the problem (in my opinion) lies with people not having a simple map and compass (and the ability to navigate using them) as a backup option. It's almost unheard of these days, as everyone just relies on screens and apps to point them in the right direction.
It comes from a rapid expansion of interest in outdoor recreation (fueled by social media), and I think a lot of people feel as though it's just a simple day out in the park when they see it pop up on the 'Gram.
Edit - and no hand-held GPS or satellite messenger
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5d ago
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u/Accomplished-Fun215 5d ago
Not nessecarily overweight, but "go to the gym or jog occasionally" fitness is not the same as hiking fitness. Not to mention sedentary skinny-fat people.
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
It's the height. It is a completely different challenge.
And then there's of course, the territory. If you're not used to mountain hiking, navigating those paths will take you a lot longer than it takes you to jog on a flat road.
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u/theoriginalharbinger 3d ago
I'll create possible routes in Gaia using snap-to-route, identify waypoints/milestones, and then share those around. You can also import/export GPX from Garmin Connect or Strava if you want to use your own (or somebody else's) historical routes. Waypoint milestones are good, because you can tell the group if we aren't at this milestone by this time, we are turning around.
Clear Creek (again, why won't this sub let me post pictures in comments) is actually two trails - a downhill and an uphill. And there are a couple high camps that are not readily labeled on most maps that are still better than what you get lower down the slope. IE, here: (41.39942, -122.18281) is a high camp that they would have been better served staying at (11,500 feet rather than 8,500).
While routefinding isn't all that hard going downhill on Clear Creek (you just look for the various windbreaks at the camp sites), it can be if it gets dark or you don't know what to look for.
As far as the 1k rule - that's what most guide outfits will expect you to do, on average. There are places where you're certainly going to be slower than that if the terrain is awful, but as far as hiking speed goes, 1k/hour above 10k is good enough to get you your goal.
I pulled up my Strava deets for when I did Avalanche, and it took me 40 minutes to cover the first 1000 feet (from 10,400 to 11,400) from Helen Lake, 25 to cover the next 1000 (11,400 to 12,400), 45 to do the next thousand (to 13,400) and then 30 minutes to cover the last 700 feet to the summit (where I took a really great nap). So 1k/hour in crampons seems fairly reasonable.
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u/jankyalias 5d ago
Fitness issue. Tons of people do Shasta car to car. I’m not one of them I camped out at Helen Lake when I did it, but particularly people who tour it will start super early and if snow conditions are good once they summit they can get down lickity split. Although you can just hike it C2C.
But yeah, fitness.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago
These people actually climbed by Clear Creek, which is on the southeast side of the mountain. So no Lake Helen. Also, this route is commonly done without snow as a trail hike. But still, fitness seems to be an issue. I’m no elite athlete. But I usually complete this route C2C in about 15 hours (I’m VERY slow compared to most on descent).
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u/jankyalias 5d ago
Yeah this late in the season I assumed it’d be the CC route. People also C2C that one too.
But I read about that route and it just sounds like a suffer fest, gimme snow any day compared to scree and whatnot.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago edited 5d ago
Clear Creek is not as bad as people say. Having gone this way several times, the key point to remember is that there is lots of trail braiding, and the difficulty is very much dependent on the actual trail you take. Generally speaking, the trails to your right on ascent are the trails you want to stick to while climbing. They tend to take more switchbacks, and be less steep. If you make the mistake and go more to your left, you will encounter loose trails that climb straight up the mountain. These work well for a rapid plunge-stepping descent, but are MISERABLE for ascent. Of course, even a fast, plunge stepping descent of Clear Creek is going to be slower and more effortful than a glissade on Avalanche Gulch.
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u/HotPotentDadNut 5d ago
I did it car-to-car a few weeks ago!
If you are fit and acclimated it is totally reasonable to do it in a day.Took me about 13 hours, but I was slowed down significantly as I ended up escorting a kid I met in the parking lot (who was also going solo and asked if we could buddy up) to 12k.
Also got dummy stoned at UFO rock.
Also also was pretty gassed from doing Whitney car-to-car a few days prior 🥴•
u/Automatic-Rich254 5d ago
You sound cool
(Checks username)
Yep I was right
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u/HotPotentDadNut 5d ago
Hah thank you <3
It’s a Trixie Mattel quote I used to use to gross out my guildmates way back when on WoW•
u/theDudeUh 5d ago edited 5d ago
Totally depends on the route. There are technical glacier climbs and then there is Clear Creek which is a non-technical scramble but even on that route you can easily end up on a glacier if you get off route.
The upper half of Clear creek is still a route requiring navigation skills, not a well established trail like Whitney.
EDIT: Clear Creek is also 7800 feet in elevation gain so it’s a big day if you’re trying to car to car it.
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u/Jack-Burton-Says 5d ago
It’s generally 2 days unless you’re a beast. Most people camp at that 11k-ish zone then summit the next day.
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u/Hopsblues 5d ago
Where is tree line there, is that camp area above tree line? I've never been there, seen it up close.
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u/disposablcats 5d ago
I think it's safe to assume anyone using AI to plan their route isn't experienced and is likely not highly active or in shape.
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u/thesmeggyone 5d ago
... or, it's safe to say AI has no idea what kind of shape you are in.
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u/VulfSki 5d ago
And it pulled from incorrect source.
The problem with all trails and AI taking it's numbers from all trails, is people track hikes when they don't complete it.
So all trails will say a hike takes 8 hours and then you look at the tracked hike someone did. And they did maybe half of the route and turned around.
But the platform doesn't no the difference between someone completing the whole route or not.
So it weighs someone walking a mile from the trail head and back equally to someone who did the whole route. Which means it is a mathematical certainty for the expected route times to be lower than what is reasonable.
It's not a problem on easier hikes where people finish usually or it's a family friendly hike where a lot of people are just straight up slow.
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u/Same-Marketing-4860 5d ago
Huh...
Anecdotally we have found in our group that alltrails always lists the times as longer than they actually take us.
We can usually get things done c2c in 70% the alltrails time.
Also it's trash, use a guidebook or summitpost for beta and strava is significantly better than alltrails and doesn't drain your battery in 5 hrs. Idk how it became so popular it's the worst at what it does
Mebbe we r just fit
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u/VulfSki 5d ago
I find the times longer for easy to mid hikes.
For many harder hikes in the mountains, I find them shorter and then look at the tracked hikes and it's a lot of them are half the hike.
I haven't really used all trails in years tho. I don't think it's really helpful. So maybe it's gotten better.
But if you pick a trail that has times from people who completed it, and not half completed I agree that they are usually very long. Similar to how I find Google maps walking directions way over estimates walking times. (I use Google maps directions for walking in an unfamiliar city. Not for hikes)
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u/Nomer77 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't know, I feel like information about potential routes or hikes isn't the worst idea. LLMs are extremely good at scraping comments and trip reports across different websites (AllTrails, Reddit, MountainProject, personal blogs, Facebook groups) and surfacing that information and synthesizing and summarizing public sentiment. Time estimates are always predicated on certain fitness levels, you see people give bad advice on this forum just as often. If beginners are 10 hours into a "8 hour" summit push and still 3000 feet short and think it is a good idea to press on... There was never any helping them.
I've been traveling for work and asked Google or an LLM for a place to run nearby. Google maps may not know a road is closed/bad and sometimes people get suggested stuff that is way too technical for them, but using LLMs as a sort of hotel concierge or travel agent isn't a bad use.
Using AI to try to come up with a workout plan or any sort of advanced strength and conditioning or exercise science related stuff is extremely sub-optimal though.
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u/schmuckmulligan 5d ago
AI's great for all sorts of stuff. The trick is not relying on its outputs exclusively when your life is at stake.
Like, yeah, have it plan the route and give you basic feedback. Use it to surface reliable sources. But if you might die if it screws up, you probably want to idiot check it against advice from trusted human beings who've been to the top of the hill you're climbing.
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u/spinfire 4d ago
It's a good starting point. But I have tried using Gemini to generate suggested camping locations along a loop trail. The first attempts included real camping spots but it was very wrong about the mileage intervals in between them.
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u/stutter-rap 4d ago
using LLMs as a sort of hotel concierge or travel agent isn't a bad use.
It makes crazily packed travel itineraries - I used to follow some tourist subs and it was always obvious which itineraries had come from AI. Either they were possible but a complete whirlwind of activity (and might send you back and forth repeatedly rather than grouping nearby activities), or they weren't actually possible because the model had no travel time. After seeing those for cities I was familiar with, I don't think I'd use them myself for that purpose.
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u/parwa 5d ago
I mean in fairness, the person I know that uses AI the most is also one of the fittest people I know & uses it to plan his workouts. I'm not advocating for it, don't get me wrong, but it's not necessarily indicative of anything.
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u/IKEASTOEL 5d ago
Planning a workout is a pretty valid use case, especially if you experienced enough to know what's bollocks and what isn't. Use it myself pretty often and adjust as needed.
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u/panderingPenguin 5d ago
Generating a trip plan is also a perfectly valid use case if someone is, as you say, "experienced enough to know what's bollocks and what isn't".
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u/voodoohounds 5d ago edited 5d ago
The only experience you need is how to prompt AI. Nothing else matters.
Edit: when I first posted this, I tried to hashtag it as sarcasm. But that was removed, and I didn’t notice it. I don’t actually believe this verbatim. It was sarcasm.
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u/hackerbots 5d ago
The article is literally an example of how wrong you are those.
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u/voodoohounds 5d ago
I tried to append a sarcasm tag, but I see it was auto removed. Sorry, it was sarcasm. I tried to label it as such.
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u/matteatsyou 5d ago
Fr. Used it to create a program best for basketball which was awesome because you can’t really easily find like college lift programs
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u/jackel414 5d ago
yeah i think it’s fair to say that using AI for route planning shows a lack of experience, but i don’t think it says anything about their level of fitness. plenty of people are very active/fit and at the same time have very little outdoors/hiking experience
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u/fredmortensen 5d ago
Fwiw i just climbed Royal Arches in Yosemite and used Claude to help create a guidebook for me with pitch by pitch descriptions and photos. Was extremely useful but i was very specific on which sources i wanted it to pull data from
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u/disposablcats 5d ago
Do you have prior experience and enough of it to catch issues and make your own informed decisions without Claude? If so then by all means use it as a tool but just like using AI for anything if with your current knowledge you couldn't recreate something similar from scratch then you can't use it trusting the output. I have to keep coaching people at work on this for coding and such. It is a great tool but if you don't understand the output you can't use the output.
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u/fredmortensen 5d ago edited 5d ago
I do. And I used it as a tool just like any other tool. Not overly reliant, had backups etc.
But also its not that complicated. I fed it Sloans topo and Stephs Abeggs route beta on her website and told Claude to coalesce the beta per pitch with photos for each pitch. Then i went back and confirmed everything lined up with both sources.
So for me it was the most limited use of AI interpretation with basically zero room for hallucinations or incorrect summaries.
At one point i had it summarize all the mountain project comments and identify the highest risk points. Was good to read and it highlighted the hard to spot 13th rap (which in fact was very hard to spot lol)
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u/luckydayrainman 5d ago
That is actually pretty cool. Did AI give any recommendations on how to climb the squeeze chimney with a backpack?
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u/fredmortensen 5d ago
No haha but im sure it’ll give a decent answer. I ended up following that pitch and just tied the backpack ona figure 8 above me and as i climbed i helped push it up.
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u/luckydayrainman 5d ago
Great choice, I would always rather lead a gnarly chimney than haul the pack through it. Leave that to the second guy. 😂
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u/mannheimcrescendo 5d ago edited 5d ago
Not experienced for sure.
Insinuating AI usage correlates with being fat or out of shape is wild though
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u/afghanwhiggle 5d ago
It does however insinuate that they’re lazy and/or stupid.
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u/mannheimcrescendo 5d ago
Batting 0% so far
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u/lurker_passing_thru 5d ago
Why are you getting downvoted I have no idea. Using AI doesnt mean you let go of common sense. I have had mountain guides who have been pretty stupid too.
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u/BeachBumSage 5d ago
One can be experienced and use ai to plan a route, they can be inexperienced and very fit and use AI. They can be unfit and use a map or ai. To assume one is unfit or inexperienced because of ai says more about your reasoning skills. It does appear fitness may have been the issue here, but there are tens of thousands of climbers that utilize ai successfully in some way. You do realize most topo is created with ai these days and verified against standard measure routinely.
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u/UnclePsilocybe 5d ago
I used AI for training and prep for Mount Adams. It honestly was amazing at it. It told me several times if I was to X location by X time, then turn back. I started earlier and carried more calories than it told me and I was good to go. It did mis-read how much water I would need, but I also drink more water than needed and was well hydrated anyways. Snow is plentiful so I had no issues.
Idk why people think AI is an oracle. It's more like a super genius roommate that never sleeps
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u/Hopsblues 5d ago
I agree, it's a tool, to be used with other tools to ensure a safe trip, the one you want. Cross check what it's telling you with other sources.
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u/UnclePsilocybe 5d ago
People downsvoted me for this haha I agree. It's just like reading a scientific paper. You have to check the methodology, the sources, etc. Not rocket science at all
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u/OkDistribution5711 5d ago
So it’s a super genius that will lie to you half the time and just make shit up? Who you can’t trust so you have to use traditional sources anyway. WTF?
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u/UnclePsilocybe 5d ago
I feel like "lie to you half the time" is either a) your own bias leaking into conversations or b) incorrect, because you've never actually measured the frequency of "lies"
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u/OkDistribution5711 4d ago
Haha it can’t be both? Am I talking to a bot right now?
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u/Hopsblues 4d ago
You sound like the bot, why do you hide your comments? You are so confident in your comments, you hide them. Im not sure what you are even trying to say in this discussion
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u/UnclePsilocybe 4d ago
Yes, it very well can be both. I will accept both as an answer. So let's recap...You are incorrect and also biased
And no, someday I might feel like a bot, but I'm made of organic matter. Funny we have to even ask though. It's like blade runner or some shit LOL
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
Eh, if, as the average tourist, you ask a local how long it takes to reach the summit of x mountain, there's quite a big risk that you'll get an answer that is true for the local ... but totally wrong for YOU.
"AI said it would take 8 hours, it took them 16" ... is exactly the kind of thing that could happen pretty much the same way with a local.
Now, a local might not send people up a trail that's only used by hunters. They might take a look at the tourist's sandals and tell them they need better shoes.
But where time is concerned? Lots of people have no idea how much longer things can take you in the mountains if you're not used to it.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago
One problem with Alltrails is that it routes you on probably the worst route possible for ascent. It basically takes you STRAIGHT UP from 10500ft all the way to Red Rock at 12800ft. This is a descent route, and would be EXHAUSTING to climb. The proper ascent route is the switchbacks to the right. I’m not saying they would have summitted in six hours if they took that route. But choosing the route that they did no doubt made the climb harder than it had to be.
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u/Saclawson 5d ago
All three of the mountains you listed (Rainier, Whitney, Shasta) are in the same ballpark… if you can do one of em as a day hike, you can do all of em as a day hike.
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u/alandizzle 5d ago
I’ve climbed Shasta many times. Have done it C2C. But most times I camp, make a big push, and ski down to the car the next day.
It’s a pretty ambitious C2C for folks IMO but totally doable if you know what you’re doing.
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u/Hopsblues 5d ago
That sounds like a great couple of days....before going back to work for the week.
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u/4smodeu2 5d ago
Much more like Rainier. Shasta is a glaciated stratovolcano with similar elevation to Rainier and is typically done over multiple days (unless you're super fit, enough to do Rainier in a day).
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u/chesstwin 5d ago
Shasta see many more single day attempts than Rainier. Probably half the attempts on a given weekend are car-to-car in the Spring skiing season. Most routes are not glaciated.
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u/panderingPenguin 5d ago
Shasta is closer to Baker than Rainier in the number of people trying to do it in a day (and unsurprisingly, also in distance/vert). Unlike either Baker or Rainier, the standard routes on Shasta have no glacier travel whatsoever, and the summer route this time of year doesn't even set foot on snow except for maybe the very top.
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u/oswaldcopperpot 5d ago
13,000 feet. Two days with full gear. After half way going vertical.. each 12 steps requires a rest.
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u/trahsemaj 5d ago
Clear Creek is like 10k feet vert in a day car to car. It's a monster (I've done up to 12k and got turned by storms, it's loose steep and exhausting and I was mega fit that year).
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u/Kindly-Exchange6059 5d ago
I have over a dozen summits of Shasta. It’s always car to car. Long days on the north side are still only like 12 hours car to car.
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u/Ginge_r_ale 5d ago
I car to car’ed Shasta on the west face in June of 2025. Not only is it a technical, very demanding climb that absolutely requires past alpine experience, it took me 14.5hrs to cover the 14miles and ~8,600ft.
For the vast majority of folks, this is far closer to Rainier rather than Whitney.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago
I’ve always climbed Shasta in a day. For me, it’s usually around 15 hours C2C. The fact that it took them 16 hours to hike one way to the summit from Clear Creek Springs (which is about three miles in and 2000ft above the trailhead) suggests they were in no condition to climb Shasta.
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
I don't understand why it took them 16 hours to climb. Were they not fit or what ?
Neither very fit, nor at all experienced.
It is quite normal that an averagely fit person who has done hikes on flat land will take up to double as much to go up a mountain as an experienced mountain hiker does.
Most people who newly take up mountain hiking quickly learn that, and plan for it.
So it seems this group hadn't yet learnt that the "average time" is calculated by what the average mountain hiker can do (the German alpine club always calculates times the same), and that if you use someone's experience from the internet, the time is only correct for that person, specifically.
("Experience" doesn't necessarily mean much, you can do things wrong for quite a while until you have an accident, but how long a route takes you is something you learn fast.)
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u/BendyStraw707 5d ago
16 hours to summit? You absolutely should NOT be hiking this mountain if it takes you that long. It is not technical for a 14er where it justifies taking that long. This is 100% a conditioning and fitness issue. I live at sea level and did a car to car summit on August 16th this year. Putting yourself in danger like this not only is stupid, it’s very selfish and inconsiderate of those who have to make the rescue mission to get you out of there. Just because it’s not technical, doesn’t mean it’s not very difficult if you’re not in shape and don’t have a mindset going into it that it’s going to be insanely hard. I’ve had to turn around before due to storms. Put the pride and ego aside and learn to live to hike another day. Absolutely ridiculous.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago
And that’s 16 hours from Clear Creek Springs to the summit. NOT from the trailhead to the summit. Clear Creek Springs is already three miles in and 2000ft above the trailhead.
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u/BendyStraw707 5d ago
The disrespect of camping at the springs is what really got to me too.. there are signs everywhere stating to stay far away from that precious water
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u/WinklingDev 4d ago
Yeah them taking an additional like 4-5 hours or something from mushroom rock to the summit is absolutely wild to me. I was dealing with altitude sickness and my legs just felt like molasses so I hunkered down there while the rest of my group summitted, and it felt like maybe an hour to 90 minutes for them to come back down to me? This group in the article was really struggling with fitness or altitude but just kept going for some reason. They should’ve turned back ages before this.
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u/BendyStraw707 4d ago
100%
You have important choices to make once you reach mushroom rock (AKA shit rock, UFO rock, whatever’s your fancy) you either
A) buckle TF down and crush out the rest, trying to beat altitude sickness while maintaining a manageable pace up
B) hunker TF down if you know you can’t continue (VERY good on you for making the wise and what sounds like the correct choice during your trip)
C) hustle TF down, but making sure you do not do this alone. Can’t stress enough you need to do this hike with a partner, unless you’re experienced and have done this mountain before. Even still it’s dangerous - a majority of injuries occur during the descent. This is when people are most likely to make mistakes, loose footing and hurt themselves.•
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u/ImportantAlbatross 5d ago
It doesn't even require critical thinking--just common sense and a five-minute Web search for "hiking Mount Shasta" without AI.
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u/RainBoxRed 5d ago
You have to make a concerted effort to get a web search that is without AI now.
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u/ImportantAlbatross 5d ago
That's why I switched to DuckDuckGo. It lets you turn off the AI. The search isn't quite as good as Google used to be, but it's much better than what Google offers now.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago
That’s not going to be any better, because you will just get generic advice for the AVERAGE Shasta hiker. The same is true about reading guidebooks or even talking to people face to face who have done the hike. Without knowing these people’s actual levels of fitness and experience, it is impossible to give good advice. And honestly, the best advice would have been ‘do easier mountains first’.
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u/DoggyMcGoodboy 5d ago
'Sure, climbing Everest in one day from Base camp is excellent idea! Remember to pack 2 snickers and bottle of water!'
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u/Manoftheyear2 5d ago
This doesnt feel like strictly am AI issue. 8hr ascent on that route is reasonable. Not a ton of details on food or water, but I imagine AI was fine. Whenever I've used AI for thinking through hikes it mentions turnaround times that im guessing the group ignored. On them, big time, for thinking a 16hr ascent is reasonable given planning on half that time
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u/SurroundQuirky8613 5d ago
AllTrails doesn’t make you ignore other climbers, ignore how you feel, or control the pace of your climb. They pushed to summit despite everyone they met telling them to turn around.
This isn’t the fault of AI. It’s the fault of the climbers making one bad decision after another.
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u/Heem_butt08 5d ago edited 5d ago
When I was planning my trip to Maui, I had asked chat gpt about some cool nature spots on the west side of the island.
It told me about the Nakalele blowhole. It suggested we head over to the Waihee ridge trail afterwards taking highway 340, which chatgpt called the “secret road to Hana” east from the blowhole… luckily I independently researched this highway only to find out it’s NOT safe AT ALL. It is NOT recommended to drive on this road due to washouts, cliffside twists and turns and overall rough, ever changing, and dangerous conditions.
We were at the blowhole when we came across a group of folks that had come from that highway due to the same suggestion from Chatgpt from waihee ridge to the blowhole. It took them HOURS to get there as the road was absolutely terrifying, washed out, and had no places to turn around.
Use your human brain and double check everything you’re told by AI. It might save your ass from disaster.
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u/TemporaryKooky9835 5d ago edited 5d ago
The problem with using Gemini, ChalGPT, Claude, etc. to plan a Shasta climb is that it is going to give generic information based on the average person who climbs Shasta. This is also true of looking for information through basic web searches, guide books, or even ‘word of mouth’. For instance, if someone was to ask me personally about climbing Shasta, I would likely give information based on my experiences on the mountain since I have nothing else to go by. I could maybe say to take extra stuff if they think they will take longer. But I probably wouldn’t even consider someone taking 16 hours to hike from the springs to the summit. Of course, I could ask questions regarding experience first. But I likely wouldn’t, since some may find this insulting. So you can’t fully blame Gemini on this one.
The REAL problem here is preparation. And by preparation, I mean conditioning and experience. If someone takes 16 hours to get to the summit from Clear Creek Springs, they clearly don’t have the fitness level required to climb a mountain like Shasta. And if they are not able to navigate their way down the mountain (even in the dark), they don’t have the skills required to be on a mountain of this scale.
The thing about hiking and mountaineering is that there is a progression to it. You don’t just go out and climb a mountain like Shasta as your first summit because it seems like a ‘cool thing to do’. You build up to it by doing a progression of easier summits. This is how you build up both your fitness and your skills to a point where you can safely and successfully climb a mountain like Shasta. But far too few people seem to realize this, which causes problems such as this one and many others (some of which I have personally dealt with on popular mountains like Shasta and Whitney).
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u/ptolani 5d ago
It doesn't sound like the use of AI had much to do with this situation? Mostly, they just needed to turn around when it was clear they were way behind their schedule. When they "considered turning around" they were already 10 hours into a supposed 8 hour climb, and a long way from the summit.
It's a bit unclear if they really expected 8 hours including descent or just the ascent. But it's pretty mad to keep going either way.
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u/Cameltoenail 4d ago
I climbed Shasta from Clear Creek on one of my summits up there. You can do it in a day, but we hiked up above 10k and found a great campsite. We started at 0200 and were back to our tent, back to the car and on the road by noon. On the way down the next day, we saw numerous groups going up in tennis shoes with one bottle of water per person. A few groups with no backpacks, lighting, anything. I was super concerned for them, but this was about 8 years ago and I figured most turned back. You can definitely do that route in a day with a super early start, but it’s dependent on fitness and always go prepared.
Personally, I love spending the night on the mountain somewhere before we do a summit push because I find it really special to sleep on the mountain either before or after.
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u/xylemphloem 5d ago
If you don't know about the 10 essentials without using AI, you have no business trying to climb a peak like Shasta.
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u/WaffleBlues 5d ago
This isn't an issue with AI, this is an issue with the people who decided they could rely fully on it. If you are doing something that could potentially risk your life or serious injury AND you have NO experience doing it, then it would be incredibly stupid to rely solely on AI to figure it out for you.
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u/Lives_on_mars 5d ago
The hiking group that did tell them to summit also deserves some cred for this mess. Can’t imagine why they waved them on.
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u/boofcakin171 5d ago
The type of person who believes LLMs are magic are exactly the type of people who would not question Gemini about climbing times. Gemini is often wrong because LLMs are dog shit, trusting them is stupid. I blame the stupid human more than a stupid machine but both are bad.
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u/WaffleBlues 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't think it's fair to put any blame at all on an LLM. I'm going to assume these were all adults, who consciously made the decision to rely on an LLM as their guide to climbing a fucking mountain. How in the world anyone could rationalize that anything other than them is accountable for that decision is beyond me.
I think it's interesting that instead of this being a conversation on the monumentally bad decision making of these people, it's about how much LLMs suck. That's fascinating. I'm not a user of LLMs (other than casual playing around).
The article literally says they weren't feeling well, and we're running out of water AND made the decision to keep climbing...
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u/boofcakin171 5d ago
I very clearly blamed the humans in my comment. LLMs are dogshit and give out bad information which idiots trust, if they had called the ranger station for information rather than trusting an LLM they likely would not have ended up in this situation BUT anyone dumb enough to think an LLM will give them accurate information likely is too stupid to find a reliable source.
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u/WaffleBlues 5d ago
Yes, but you seem more invested in making some edgy point about LLMs. I think the mountaineering community struggles with accountability.
A group of adults decided to climb a mountain, using Gemini as their guide. When they were sick, and at twice there estimated climbing time, and running low on water they made the fucking choice to keep climbing.
I don't give a fuck about LLMs. That is absolutely atrocious decision making.
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u/TheDaysComeAndGone 4d ago
I think the problem is simply that they didn’t turn around earlier? The information was probably accurate for an average hiker.
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u/Cautious-Skirt-8335 5d ago
Kind of respect that they made it, hopefully they learn a lesson from it.
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u/Slight-Regular-3711 4d ago
This is really what starts the Human vs AI arms race. Humans blaming AI for their own failures.
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u/AcanthaceaeOk2941 3d ago
What do we expect if we keep preventing darwinism
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
We aren't preventing darwinism. We are preventing natural selection ... somewhat. (It would be more accurate to say that we CHANGE natural selection. It is still survival of the fittest. Except "the fittest" is now women who are civil servants and cannot lose their jobs if they take a break to stay at home for a while with their baby, the very rich, or those who are jobless and living off welfare anyway. Outdoorsy survival skills have become rather irrelevant. A genetic predisposition to be able to have kids at a high age, and resistance to diabetes, heart disease and cancer have become waaaay more important than they used to be.)
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
I want to know why there was a climbing group that told them to go on.
Seems they weren't the only stupid people up there. Or they didn't tell that other group when they started ...
(Obviously, "turn around if you aren't there by noon" is a very imprecise advice. If you start at 10 am and are there at 14:00, then there's no problem. If you start at 3 am ... that's different.
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u/Far-Scientist-641 5d ago
Nothing is hard with the right conditioning. We did car to car on Memorial Day on Avvy mostly a zone 1-3 workout. Just over 13 hours, which isn’t terrible for my age.
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u/TheDaysComeAndGone 4d ago
None of this is AI’s fault.
Obvious mistakes:
- Not turning back when it became obvious they were not making fast enough progress.
- Relying on a single smartphone in a group of three. Did the other two really not have a phone?
- Not bringing at least a 40g emergency blanket. This is a 4300m tall mountain, if the weather turns or you have any kind of emergency it can get cold and deadly very quickly.
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u/Sofasurvivor 1d ago
Ok, but with the emergency blanket, you still need rescue, you'll just be more comfortable waiting for it (and have a higher chance of survival until help arrives)
Technically not the fault of AI, true, but if they had asked a human, they would have some chance at being told this was not a good mountain for beginners.
And if they'd read a book ... well, there might have been info on turning around and safety equipment.
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u/TheDaysComeAndGone 1d ago
Technically not the fault of AI, true, but if they had asked a human, they would have some chance at being told this was not a good mountain for beginners.
Or maybe said human would be a local who’s done the hike hundreds of times over their life and totally underestimates how unfit and slow a beginner can be and would have told them that everything would be fine.
Same for a book which is written by a human after all.
Experienced athletes are notorious for underestimating how unfit someone can be.
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u/roverandom-moon 5d ago
Heartwarming to see that no evolution of technology will ever spare humanity from Darwinism
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u/gouverneurmorris 5d ago
16 hrs from clear creek is crazy work especially when you expect 8…at some point you see the sun coming down and gotta call it. That base area is definitely confusing on the way back, especially at night with no nav. Glad they’re safe and hope they’ve learned something along with getting a core story.
Also this article hates on packing simple carbs like it’s an AI hallucination or something…candy is an essential!