Teenager rescued from British Columbia cliff after following AI-planned route

A 16-year-old hiker required an aerial rescue on Crown Mountain in British Columbia after following a route suggested by the Claude AI chatbot. The teenager became stranded on a steep climbing formation known as the ‘Widowmaker’ after being led off the standard hiking trail.

North Shore Rescue reported that the subject was too close to a vertical wall for a helicopter to land technicians directly at his location. Rescuers had to be inserted above the hiker, establish an anchor, and belay a team member down to move the teenager to an extraction point. Search manager Paul Markey warned the public against relying on AI chatbots for navigation, noting that the software has no real-world experience in specific outdoor locations.

This incident follows a similar event in California’s Cascade Range, where three hikers were rescued after Google’s Gemini AI advised them to carry insufficient food and water, turning a planned eight-hour trip into a multi-day ordeal.