09/06/2026
NOT TRUSTWORTHY for planning travel!
Three California college students had to be rescued from Mount Shasta on Monday during a poorly planned summit climb in which they overshot their itinerary, meandered off-route and ran out of food and water.
According to authorities with Siskiyou County and the U.S. Forest Service, the novice climbers, from Roseville, said they’d entrusted Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini, to help them craft key logistics of their trip — from the best route up the mountain to the types of food they should pack and how much water they should carry with them. The county Sheriff’s Office called relying on artificial intelligence tools “a critical misstep.”
The role of AI in wilderness trip-planning has become a heated topic of conversation in California’s north state following a series of instances in which hikers and campers in the Shasta area became lost or confused after relying on chatbots to help them devise their adventures.
