As a person with an admittedly poor sense of direction, I can’t leave home without my GPS. Almost like a safety blanket, having that GPS in my car just makes me feel at ease. I like the freedom of knowing that I can find almost any location at a moment’s notice without having to fumble with a map or written directions.
But, when a GPS becomes a substitute for our own judgment and common sense, it has outlived its usefulness. In the case of a vacationing group of friends and family in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, blindly following a GPS could easily have cost them their lives.
Can you say 500-foot cliff?
From the Salt Lake Tribune:
About 8 p.m. Saturday, 26 vacationing friends and family members from Southern California, ranging in age from 2 to 70, loaded in four vehicles and left Bryce Canyon National Park for the Grand Canyon.
En route, they stopped to see Grosvenor Arch. Then, headed for Arizona, they got stranded on the edge of a 500-foot cliff.
The incident is part of a growing problem of people relying on technology to find a quick route across an area of deep canyons, washes and primitive roads that could be too much even for off-highway vehicles.
In the Saturday episode, the GPS instructed the group to head south, but it would have been better to return to Cottonwood Canyon Road, said Kane County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Tracy Glover.
About 1 a.m. Sunday morning, the group used a cell phone to call for help.
“They were pretty upset and panicking at first, but at about 6 in the morning they were able to give us the coordinates,” Glover said.
That was after deputies explained how to use their GPS to determine coordinates. The group was found about 11:45 a.m. Sunday at Four Mile Bench in northern Kane County.
“All of them were thirsty, but no one was injured,” Glover said.
Stories like this are becoming all too common. While technology is certainly useful, it’s no substitute for a map and compass—and knowing how to use both. Heck, map and compass orienteering is a basic skill young people learn as part of NRA’s Youth Hunter Education Challenge.
While we may think a GPS knows where it’s taking us, it’s probably best to use the computer in our head instead of the one stuck to our windshield or found in our hand-held device when the road we’re on looks like the one less traveled. A GPS can’t discern when a route looks questionable. Our eyes and instincts can.
“It’s just a piece of equipment that’s only as good as the data programmed into it,” said Kane County Sheriff Lamont Smith in the Salt Lake Tribune. “It can show which direction to go, but not the 500-foot cliff where you can’t go any farther.”
It’s also true that batteries can go dead and electronic equipment can break, be misplaced, or malfunction. That’s why it’s a good plan to have a map and compass as a backup. They don’t take up much space in your pack or car, and both can get you out of a tight spot—perhaps even save your life.
As hunters, our sense of adventure can lead us into some of the prettiest—and remote—areas of the country. If you have a hairy story about getting lost courtesy of a GPS, send it to huntersrights@nrahq.org. If any unique stories come our way, we’ll be sure to share them.
