A 16-year-old boy was rescued from steep mountainous terrain in the B.C. backcountry on Sunday after Claude AI guided him to the wrong location, according to North Shore Rescue. Search Manager Paul Markey told CTV News that NSR members were called to the area of Crown Mountain, not far from Grouse Mountain, at around 3:30 p.m. Markey said the teenager rode the gondola up to Grouse Mountain at around 8 a.m., and asked Claude AI to plan a trip to Crown Mountain. The artificial intelligence tool sent him down the Crown Pass and up through Crater Slabs and Crown Couloir before his instructions led him off the trail route. He continued on through difficult terrain, and eventually called for help from the base of Widowmaker Arete’s final headwall. “A fall would have resulted in significant injury or potentially death,” Markey explained. NSR said two rescue techs were lowered to an area above the teenager’s location because he was too close to the vertical wall for their helicopter to get any closer. “When on the ground, the crew established an anchor, and one member was belayed to the subject. There, the member established additional protection and was able to move the subject to a suitable extraction point,” NSR staff wrote in their task debrief. The teen was extracted by about 6:30 p.m. Markey urged hikers and mountaineers not to follow the directions of artificial intelligence when mapping their routes. “Claude has never been in that specific area, has never been on that route, and has never been in the outdoors—do your own research and gain your own knowledge of the area and supplement it with training and navigation,” he said. Markey said the boy had a lot of experience with high-difficulty indoor climbing and came well equipped for hiking and some of the terrain, but this was his first foray into outdoor climbing. “Certainly not something you should be doing any time on your own,” he said, noting that the helicopter ride home came with an educational discussion for the young mountaineer. “He’s a good kid and definitely an adventurous sort. He was very scared and thankful.” Markey added that North Shore Rescue was dispatched to Crown Mountain three times this weekend, which was very unusual, as it had been years since their last call to the area.
