Group of Teen Hikers Relied on Google Maps. It Was a Disaster. (sfgate.com) 132
"When a group of teenagers set out to hike British Columbia's famed Howe Sound Crest Trail in early July, Google Maps suggested the trek would take about five hours," reports SFGate.
"Instead, the hike stretched deep into the night, leaving the group exhausted, dehydrated, injured and in need of a helicopter rescue..." Although the approximately 18-mile route with a 6,000-foot elevation gain can be completed by experienced trail runners in a day, search and rescue officials generally recommend hikers treat it as a two-day backpacking trip. The teenagers, all 17 years old, believed Google Maps' estimate that the route would take about five hours. The printed directions they were carrying, which were shared publicly by Lions Bay Search and Rescue, gave simple instructions for two legs of the trail, but didn't account for the terrain or elevation. "[Google Maps] is calculating the time that you're walking a straight road on pavement," [said Maria Masiar, training officer and search manager with Lions Bay Search and Rescue]. "When you get into outdoor terrain, that no longer holds true."
Expecting only a short outing, each hiker carried about half a liter of water and limited food. There are no reliable water sources along the trail, meaning hikers must carry enough supplies for the entire route. As the group climbed, they began suffering from dehydration and muscle cramps but continued onward despite falling dramatically behind schedule. Eventually, the group made the decision to turn back and abandon making it to the end of the trail — and as the sun began to set and the group started to descend, fatigue took its toll. According to Masiar, members of the group had already stumbled and fallen several times while trying to race the coming dark, and only one hiker had a headlamp. Eventually, another hiker slipped about 10 feet off a boulder, injuring his tailbone badly enough that he could no longer continue. Search and rescue crews responded, ultimately evacuating him by helicopter.
"Instead, the hike stretched deep into the night, leaving the group exhausted, dehydrated, injured and in need of a helicopter rescue..." Although the approximately 18-mile route with a 6,000-foot elevation gain can be completed by experienced trail runners in a day, search and rescue officials generally recommend hikers treat it as a two-day backpacking trip. The teenagers, all 17 years old, believed Google Maps' estimate that the route would take about five hours. The printed directions they were carrying, which were shared publicly by Lions Bay Search and Rescue, gave simple instructions for two legs of the trail, but didn't account for the terrain or elevation. "[Google Maps] is calculating the time that you're walking a straight road on pavement," [said Maria Masiar, training officer and search manager with Lions Bay Search and Rescue]. "When you get into outdoor terrain, that no longer holds true."
Expecting only a short outing, each hiker carried about half a liter of water and limited food. There are no reliable water sources along the trail, meaning hikers must carry enough supplies for the entire route. As the group climbed, they began suffering from dehydration and muscle cramps but continued onward despite falling dramatically behind schedule. Eventually, the group made the decision to turn back and abandon making it to the end of the trail — and as the sun began to set and the group started to descend, fatigue took its toll. According to Masiar, members of the group had already stumbled and fallen several times while trying to race the coming dark, and only one hiker had a headlamp. Eventually, another hiker slipped about 10 feet off a boulder, injuring his tailbone badly enough that he could no longer continue. Search and rescue crews responded, ultimately evacuating him by helicopter.
I'm surprised it had any trails at all (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean Google Maps it's a sh*show for literally going 15 minutes from the car in the "woods" in Western Europe (quotes there because it's more like someone's backyard in other places less populated, and I don't mean a king or anything). OpenStreetMaps are way better but it has to be a somehow popular region/destination.
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I'm not surprised it had the trail, but I am surprised it wasn't sending a bunch of cars down it.
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I'm not surprised it had the trail, but I am surprised it wasn't sending a bunch of cars down it.
I think that's more of an Apple Maps thing. :-)
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Google Maps sent us through Kingston Wilderness last winter because I40 was going too slow (due to a holiday). I kept pestering my navigator until I got yelled at about how it looked valid. It was not valid, in retrospect I should have taken the hint when I saw the Lincoln Towncar turn around. It was definitely the start of one of those "Idiot follows Google Maps and dies of exposure" stories, except there were so many other people also taking the route that we'd have had to work really hard to actually
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Re: I'm surprised it had any trails at all (Score:2)
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Or, I can readily observe the dozen or so street names around my city that have changed before Google existed that Google still calls by the old name, and that there's no accurate pedestrian or bicycle navigation data in Google's database, and this is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, what happens to be the city Google Maps defaults to if it can't detect your location: The best Google gets. Yet, landmarks for paid business listings are extremely current.
If you're using Google Maps as a Yellow Pages, you're using it righ
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OSM once led me to a 100m sheer drop claiming there was a path down. There was, sort of, if you were rigged for alpinism, ie, enough ropes and stuff.
This lead to me passing the night at 600m elevation in bushes listening to local marriage in the valley and then watching the Orion slowly rise over the opposing ridge.
All in all it was beautiful and a lesson to be prepared more.
Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
People do dumb stuff in the mountains all the time. A couple of people apparently tried to hike this trail last winter in shorts.
This is a BC provincial park so there is undoubtedly a great big sign at the trailhead telling you how long to expect it to take and advising minimal equipment you should make sure to bring. There's also an official website (advising only experienced hikers go beyond a certain point) and many, many other websites.
Re: Dumb (Score:2)
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The signs I've seen photographed in Google Maps (I'm several timezones away and am not about to just go there and check) do not say how long you can expect to take, so maybe nobody felt the need to upload a snapshot of one of those signs. Pretty much every such sign in Austria has that information, I find their estimates a bit pessimistic but that is not a bad thing.
18 miles is just under 29km. I'd feel safe in assuming I could do 20km on a well signposted trail with not too much vertical, although I'd nee
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As for as cycling, 17 km/h in mostly flat terrain seems appropriate for a non-competitive cyclist. I'm doing about 23 km/h average (full suspension recumbent bicycle on flat asphalt) but I'm going for a leisure ride every day. I do not do any competitions nor do I care about them.
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People that confidentially mess up even getting basic information from a reliable source will not look at signs either. I am all for rescuing them, but they should be billed for it afterwards. May be a valuable life lesson. At least for those that are not so stupid they cannot be reached. We have a lot of the latter variant in the human race.
Re: Dumb (Score:2)
If you bill, they will not call for help. Recovering they bodies then would be even more expensive.
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Observable evidence says different.
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I am all for rescuing them, but they should be billed for it afterwards. That is an idiotic (American) standpoint.
a) they would be broke for the rest of their life - and could not even pay a fraction
b) they would not call for help - but try to do some risky things and die
c) if they had to pay an entrance fee to the park - the fee covers the "rescue insurance"
c1) if there was no entrance fee: the health insurance pays - at least in a normal country
c2) rescue operations for people in danger: are free in "no
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And in the real world, even the Swiss Rega bills people (that are not financial supporters) for rescue. And from them I have some actual numbers instead of your idiotic claims. Know what an average Rega helicopter rescue costs? About $5000.
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And an American helicopter would be 150k.
So, what is your point?
Oh, yes, "Swiss Rega" sends a bill. But not to the people, but to the insurance ... small but significant difference to your proposal.
AI overview:
"""
Swiss Rega (Schweizerische Rettungsflugwacht) is a private, non-profit air rescue foundation providing emergency medical assistance, mountain rescues, and patient repatriations. Founded in 1952, it operates independently of state subsidies through the financial support of millions of paying patrons
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a) and yet, nobody pays for anything in these situations, usually. Healthcare picks it up. The price is inflated specifically because of socialized services: what's about $10k in operational cost ends up with a bill for $50k because of collusion in the subsidized healthcare environment.
b) and? We need people to fail to be guidestones for the others.
c) then the fee would be significantly higher.
c1) "normal countries" do not have parks like in America.
c2) no, they are not.
These kids compounded stupid decision
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c1) "normal countries" do not have parks like in America.
Found the dumbest idiot on the internet. You must be American, lolz.
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BC search and rescue has lots of very good reasons why they don't charge. It's a public service like police, fire and health care.
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Obviously, they are in luck, then. Several other helicopter rescue services around the world do charge. Of course, in many of these places, people have insurance.
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People do dumb stuff in the mountains all the time. A couple of people apparently tried to hike this trail last winter in shorts.
I haven't hiked this specific trail, but I saw tons and tons of people hiking a 10-mile mountain trail in Rocky Mountain National Park in the winter in sneakers (a good way to slip and injure yourself on the icy trails) and jeans (a good mechanism for getting hypothermia once they get wet after 10 seconds on the trail (see "sneakers," above)).
They station a park ranger at the trail head warning people who are clearly unprepared. But people go anyway, and then throw a fit when they are wet and cold and nee
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The sick thing is, this is probably the first time most of those kids have ever really been outdoors on their own. They did this, in all likelihood, without any parental involvement, oversight, or inform.
Anyone who's spent more than an a couple hours hiking outdoors would be able to tell you that an 18 mile, 6k elevation hike is a 2 day backpacking trip for people in good shape. lol
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Has nothing to do with AI.
And if one would ask AI, they most likely would get pretty solid hints what to do and what not.
The problem is that younger generations never did any serious outdoor activities as kids. Have in general an odd world view about "common sense".
I once had a GF in Paris, actually a clever girl - but nearly no knowledge about "physics". We left a subway station and I walked to the direction we want to go, and she askes: "you have been here before?" I said "no, why?"
"How do you know where
Using technology is hard (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to victim blame. This is what happens when you blindly accept what a computer tells you. Based solely on this story, none of them did the least bit of research into what this trail entailed OTHER than what Google Maps said. Again, based solely on this story, none checked with any of the ranger stations or even the web site of the trail itself to see if it had any information on this trail.
If you've never hiked a trail, or even driven somewhere, in this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for not doing your research (the good kind, not the vaccination kind) prior to leaving. We literally have the information at our fingertips to find out what something is like prior to going there. How about we use it.
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I think the victims here are the rescue crew that had their time wasted. Doing it to yourself (as these morons did) does not make you a proper victim.
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Having steady employment is being a "victim" now?
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At least in this part of Canada, where this story originates, search and rescue is all volunteer with government help for equipment and such.
Just read an article in a paper somewhat local to this story on the last weeks search and rescue missions. 6 IIRC, all easy trails with people slipping etc and getting injured and often having to be carried out on stretcher by the volunteers. The government does mostly pay for the ambulance that picks them up, last I saw, there was a $75 charge for the ambulance.
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The problem is the ease at which we are connected - we assume cellular coverage is universal because everywhere we go there is cellphone coverage basically. And a lot of people who grew up with digital technology never envisioned there are alternatives to not being connected, always.
It happens all the time in BC, because we have a lot of urban trails and parks that are literally minutes from city limits. Cellphone coverage is basically there at the start of the trail because it's barely out of the city.
This
Re: Using technology is hard (Score:2)
Reduce your risk by this. (Score:2)
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I can't agree more. You don't need to be a trail running to go 18 miles with a 6000 ft climb in a single hike. Doing the math, you can complete the trail in about 10 hours, which is more than reasonable if you just bring enough food and water. In fact, it's considered a long day hike or a short overnighter. I trail run between 5 and 7 miles 3x weekly and the 7-miler I can do in under 2 hours. There's around 600ft of elevation gain on it and at times I take a detour that adds another somewhat steep 300ft. I
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They probably simply clicked/tabbed the wrong button.
Google is not really that good for "walking", especially in cities that are made for walking, like Paris.
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To be fair, before the era of computer maps or smart phones I once did something similar (but not as serious) in the Colorado Rockies. Looking at a paper trail map, I convinced my wife that we could hike up to a lake, have a picnic, and hike back down. After getting a little over half way up, we decided to just stop, eat, and hike back. The sun set well before we got back, we didn't have flashlights, and we could hear coyotes (and m
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Similar - by a far sketch - happend to me.
We were rock climbing, and rested to long on the peak enjoying the sunset.
Half an hour after we were down, we had to walk something like 30 mins or more to our car.
Through the forest, mostly firn trees, but plenty of wide canapé deciduous trees.
It was so damn dark, you literally could see nothing. Absolutely nothing.
You could "imagine" that you see your hands if you hold them in front of your eyes.
We basically only found the way out as the main "trail" wa
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Re: Using technology is hard (Score:2)
By 17 you know you are invincible and you never back away from a challenge offered by your mate, no matter how stupid it is.
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there is absolutely no excuse for not doing your research
You're quick to victim blame without realising they DID do their research. We've an entire generation of people who have grown up believing Google's answers are the research. They've used maps for everything and it's worked for them, why not believe it for a hiking trip as well.
The problem with victim blaming is you don't address the underlying situations that created the victims in the first place. Yes IMO these kids were stupid, but that doesn't solve anything. The discussion HAS to focus on *why* these k
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I don't think you can just blame this on being 17. I did a hike of slightly longer distance/elevation in late fall/early winter at 18. This was pre smartphone, but post internet. Knowing I'd be going 26 miles and 8,000 vert, I brought 3 liters of water and roughly 5,000 calories of food (with a known resupply point at the 1/4 point and halfway). I started at 5am knowing I'd be in for a VERY long day (ended up finishing at 8pm by headlamp). At no point did I ever think I could do an 18 mile hike in 5 hours o
Re: Using technology is hard (Score:2)
When you decide to put some time into alternative modes, there's still a ton of choices for what to work on. During COVID they tried to improve bike routing. A few years before that they tried to make walking understand which side of the road the sidewalks were on. There has been at least some effort to represent elevation change over a rout
Sound very inexperienced (Score:4, Insightful)
The water quantity seems short to me even for the 5-6 hour plan. I know I take more than that myself for similar duration. Very much a this will be fun let’s just do it scenario.
Real lesson is to get the actual trail maps and learn how to read them.
Of course - can still go wrong - in Boy Scouts in the mid 90s one of our leaders planned a hike. Somehow read an 8.5 mile hike that was actually 14 miles. Started seeming odd when we were nowhere our planned lunch spot at the point we needed the meal. Other leader double checked him and realized he fucked up. No sat phone or anything, so the parents at the far end got quite concerned when our planned pickup time came and went. Over 3 1/2 hours later we showed up. At least we had water purification stuff to make some extra water for ourselves.
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8.5 miles is close to 14km. I can't see how that could have been a factor but the correlation feels too close to be coincidental.
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The water quantity seems short to me even for the 5-6 hour plan.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Half a liter of water for a 5hr remote hike?! "We're all gonna diiiiiieee!"
You always have to be ready to get stuck there for awhile, even if you know the trail.
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Generation Alphas: "That's what happens when you don't let us have our phones."
Re: Sound very inexperienced (Score:2)
I did 22 miles today, with around 5000ft up and down, in about 6.5 hours. It's really not that much if you're an experienced walker. It's just that kids these days want all the glory with no training/prior experience. I believe they call it aura farming, or something like that. It must have been a really sad wake-up call for them. Realising that you can't bullshit yourself into success no matter how much "you've got this" reassurance you get from your Insta followers.
Re: Sound very inexperienced (Score:2)
I hike a lot, and I actually did 22 miles today. My golden rule is to take 2 litres of Lucozade for every 15 miles of distance, and to always assume the distance will be 10% longer than the route/map/Garmin says. Elevation estimates are even worse - I was expected to do 750m total but ended up doing 1078m. Our devices and route planners are simply not accurate enough to give us realistic estimates, even if you're an experienced hiker.
Rescuer perspective (Score:5, Informative)
In this particular instance: 6000 feet of elevation gain is rather a lot. I've done 5000 up/down in a single day, but that's a LONG day even for someone who's fairly fit and accustomed to the exertion. Anyone who's not in shape is going to really struggle not just with the exertion but with the altitude, and we see in this instance, as they fatigue they may stumble and/or fall. It's just not a good idea, even for (let's say) young people who are physically active, go to the gym, play a sport or two -- because it's a very different kind of physical activity and because you can't just stop when you've had enough.
Aside: experienced trail runners make all of us look silly. I remember slogging my way up a trail at 11,000 feet when I heard the quick tap-tap-tap of one behind me. He went by with a quick "Morning!" and just kept going. I was still slogging my way up at about 12,000 feet when I saw him coming toward me, on his way back down -- same tap-tap-tap at the same pace, just out for a casual morning trot while we ordinary mortals were trudging along. I'm willing to bet that he did that trail often enough to know every rock, to have every step mapped out in his brain, to just dance his way up and down.
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I've done some trail running. Not enough to make a hiker look silly, but a bit, and a lot of hiking. I was hiking in Ethiopia one time and we kept having to duck off the trail to let women carrying bundles of stuff on their heads pass. The real kicker was when a guy on crutches who didn't have any feet passed us.
Complete ignorance of the outdoors. (Score:2)
The thing that freaks me out the most is 1/2 L of water. To me that speaks the loudest with respect to being utterly unprepared for a wilderness setting. I’m afraid to
Re: Rescuer perspective (Score:2)
I'm doing a 56 mile event next month, with about 8200m of elevation, in 24 hours. With me luck. ðY(TM)
Re: Rescuer perspective (Score:2)
Sorry, 8200ft.
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I was about to question, how you want to get up to the peak of Mount Everest in 24h ... haha.
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5000 feet (or even 1000) is deceptively tough when it is in the other direction. (I know the Rescuer knows this but saying it for the general).
Canyons and mountain routes can be deceptively difficult. Examples include the Grand Canyon, obviously, but also, say, starting a hike from a high point along the Blue Ridge Parkway or (in Shenandoah NP) Skyline drive. You head down, not up, a generally easy descent to see the landmark...and then after having been out for 2-3 hours, you have to climb back up. So the
It was 5 hours to drive (Score:5, Funny)
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No mod points, I'd say +1 funny...
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I had the opposite problem once. Wondered why the GPS kept saying "turn here" after I was already in the intersection. And then it tried to send me the wrong way down a 1-way street! Finally figured out it had somehow been switched to walking mode.
Walking isn't hiking (Score:2)
Walking and hiking are usually two very different things, and 18 miles in 5 hours requires an average of 3.6 mph, which isn't a stroll.
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Here is Sonnet 5's rather bad take on it:
> what would be a respectable time to walk 18 miles?
For an 18-mile walk, times generally break down like this:
Casual/relaxed pace (~20 min/mile, 3 mph): around 6 hours
Average brisk pace (~15â"17 min/mile, 3.5â"4 mph): around 4.5â"5 hours
Fast/fit pace (~13â"14 min/mile, 4.3â"4.5 mph): around 4â"4.2 hours
Competitive race-w
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Doing it on hilly terrain, with a loaded pack, on a hot day ... add 30 min.
For a 6,000 foot elevation gain? Hmm. Doubt.
Perhaps it would be best to consult better sources [outdoorvancouver.ca]. This site has it as a "trail run" taking 9 hours. You'd already know from experience if you were this good.
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Not sure what you mean by that ?
I was just confirming the abysmal advice that AI, even something well regarded such as Sonnet 5, is dishing out.
Of course the teens would have been better off consulting a specialized hiking app and not AI, but there again adults have been following Google Maps and GPS directions and driving into lakes, so not so surprising.
The "add 30 mins" if you are doing it hopping one one leg is, well, interesting ...
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Your "Casual/relaxed pace” number is more realistically a “military road march with a light load on level terrain”. Which is not what that trail was. And “fit” is not “conditioned for long hikes and marches”.
That software is for a fitness trail at a public park. Not a wilderness setting. You can’t simply use distance divided by walking speed for a time es
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> You likely replicated the sort of calculation they did. Demonstrated how to get oneself into trouble.
Yes, that was the entire point of my post, to give a specific example of what these LLMs are saying!
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> You likely replicated the sort of calculation they did. Demonstrated how to get oneself into trouble.
Yes, that was the entire point of my post, to give a specific example of what these LLMs are saying!
That's what I thought. But I feared the humor and/or warning to subtle. :-)
Pedestrians get sent round traffic circles (Score:5, Interesting)
Using Google maps as a pedestrian is really dangerous. It tells you to walk around traffic circles as if you're a car that has to do 270 degrees.
Also, it keeps pointing the map north even if you're walking south.
Re:Pedestrians get sent round traffic circles (Score:4, Interesting)
Using Google maps as a pedestrian is really dangerous.
The bike routes it gives are also quite bad, too. It doesn't seem to recognize bike trails and will often favor routing through roads without a bike lane, even when there are alternate roads with bike lanes available.
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That is a local problem. Where I live Google maps very much recognises all bike paths and even prefers segregated bike paths that may be slightly longer travel to shared bike paths on the road.
A lot of Google's mapping was done itself, but a very significant amount of it relies on government information. OpenStreetMap is very similar. It's rubbish in some countries and excellent in others.
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It's hit or miss. It can be helpful in finding bike paths or official bike routes and ways to connect them in some locations. But it will also occasionally route through roads that would be quite dangerous to ride on due to heavy traffic. Additionally, it will sometimes route on gravel roads/paths without asking whether unpaved is ok. Gravel roads may be fine on some bikes and some roads, but deep gravel may be unrideable on road bikes. If you aren't careful and didn't check the route, you could end up walk
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Also, it keeps pointing the map north even if you're walking south.
... then you have a *real* map that will always tell you what direction you are realy going in. Myself, I have never used Google Maps while travelling. I have paper maps and a hand-held GPS receiver. Even in the car.
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when hiking/walking, i'd rather it stay northbound and click that compass to keep it that way.
otherwise, the pace i'm walking is so slow that the thing keeps changing up what direction it thinks i'm walking in, spins around 3 times, and throws a whole new side trek onto my route.
when i keep it northbound, it still adds that useless side-trek, but at least it isn't spinning all the time.
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Do you mean your phone? You have to be stationary to use the phone as a reliable compass.
If you truly mean a mechanical compass: It's sounds like you got something loose and iron near the compass. Even a watch-strap can make a difference. One doesn't have to slow down for a mechanical compass and it doesn't suffer a flat battery.
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He means the compass icon on google maps, it switches between "head up" and "north up".
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Using Google maps as a pedestrian is really dangerous. It tells you to walk around traffic circles as if you're a car that has to do 270 degrees.
That doesn't sound like a Google Maps problem as much as it is an infrastructure design problem. Yeah I've seen it tell me to walk 270 degrees around a traffic circle as well, but then basically all our traffic circles have an even bigger circular footpath around them because where I live the concept of using you feet is not an after thought.
I've used Google to navigate walking in America and I was dumbfounded not by how dangerous the instructions were, but by how dangerous the road design was that resulted
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It is up to you, to click: head up, or north up.
Actually: I always have north up.
I do not really find it useful to have "head up".
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If I was walking around anywhere in an urban area and needed to use google map, I just use it for rough direction and figure out the rest.
Don't follow whatever the map says blindly.
Teens do stupid thing! (Score:2)
I did 22 miles today (Score:2)
I did 22 milea today, with approximately 5000ft up and down. It's really not that much. Took me about 6h30, including a few snack breaks. It's just that kids these days want that WOW factor for their Instagram without any prep or prior experience/training. The glory of achievement without effort of thinking or training. I believe they call it aura farming, or something like that. Sadly, it doesn't work like that, no matter how much pep talk you give yourself or how much "you've got this" reassure from your
Re: I did 22 miles today (Score:2)
Oh, and I'm doing a 56-mile walk next month...
From zero to failure (Score:2)
We see their inexperience in refusing to accept they weren't prepared for the trip and cancelling early, then p
Google maps sucks even in cities. (Score:2)
There is a motorway junction where I am where its not possible to use the junction to cross the motorway on foot and you instead need to use a footbridge 500m to the south that you need to use instead. But Google Maps continues to suggest walking directions that involve the motorway junction instead of the footbridge.
And it seems there is no way to report problems like this to Google to get them to correct it and mark that bit of road as "pedestrians can't use this"
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Of course there is a way to report it. I report errors on the map all the time. I have probably 100,000 points at google - no idea what I can do with them, though.
Dumb Hikers (Score:2)
Why not approach the problem this way: Well, we've hiked (say) four hours and it'll be dark in 4 hours. Maybe we should turn around and get back before it gets dark.
So they were inexperienced. (Score:2)
1) Get a garmin with maps
2) There are better apps for hiking than google maps.
ALWAYS download the trails maps to your phone BEFORE satarting.
big typo leads to big error (Score:2)
Who put this out as trails? Wasn't it supposed to be trials? I'm telling you, our autocorrect better get out of beta STAT
That is why I use Apple Maps (Score:2)
PPPPPP (Score:2)
You should see drivers relying... (Score:2)
... on early versions of built-in SAT navs and ending up in harbor basins. At least as dangerous but arguably way more entertaining for onlookers. Especially if it was a BMW. 8-)
Can't blame Google for this one (Score:2)
Presumably, Google would at least have gotten the distance correct. Even most non-hikers understand that 18 miles a fairly serious distance to travel on foot in a day. Plus, half a liter of water for 5 hours as your only liquids is questionable even if you were just sitting on the beach. I wouldn't take that little water on a flat 18 mile mountain bike ride, let alone a mountainous hike. I've done single day hikes of that distance/gain, but a hike/climb like that is something you get up before dawn and have
Google weaknesses (Score:2)
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Hungry dingos: "Please come to Australia. Visit and enjoy our beautiful outback."
Not all "teens" are silly. (Score:2)
I learnt orienteering in ninth grade because the outdoors demands to be taken seriously. My class quite enjoyed it. We hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail on our own without worry because we knew what to do and where we were at all times. None of this was difficult.
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That there is no real connection to them being teens is what I pointed out...