Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board GPS blamed in boy's death

I realize that we live in a country in which anyone can sue anyone else, but I saw nothing in the story here that talked about any lawsuit.

I feel very bad for the mother. I can not even come close to imagining what toll that will take on her. My problem was with the comment about the lawsuit, and how people jump at that. In other words, "somebody, besides me, must be responsible for any harm that has come to me by MY actions". I also have a problem with people who take others, as well as themselves, into harms way by bad judgement. I am in SAR and see it all the time. I only wish common sense could be taught.
PS- Their is nothing in the article about the lawsuit, it was posted by someone earlier in this thread.

I'm with you all the way. In this case, and at this point, we have no evidence that the mother thinks that anyone else is responsible for what happened, but her judgment did put her and her son in harm's way. Like you, I feel very badly for someone who has to live with that.

I see no mention in here about one of my most basic tools for remote traveling. A satellite phone. I bring this with me on all remote (both walked and wheeled) air sampling projects. The cost, if owned or rented is not as high as it use to be, but what price a life.

And yes I also use a GPS/Compass/Maps.

dmatt

You need to re-read your Darwin.

We're on the same page here, but on the other hand a map and compass (and altimeter, which I find more useful than a compass if I have a map) aren't of any use unless you know how to use them, and I am pretty sure not one in ten backcountry hikers does.

The essential problem, then, with high tech devices is the suggestion that with them you don't need to bother learning basic orienteering skills.

But I am digressing as I am familiar with this story and in the end it really had nothing to do with the GPS.

She could do something about it - walk out at night on day 2 or 3 after it became obvious no one was going to help her and realizing her water supply was dwindling. There was a near full moon; sunset was around 2000; sunrise around 0600. That's 10 hours of fairly cool walking over reasonably flat terrain. At 1 1/2 mph, that's 15 miles - or with breaks, certainly at least 10 miles. She would at least have made it to pavement and an excellent chance of encountering a vehicle.

Thanks. In this case I was thinking more in line with the Darwin Awards. In my opinion the wrong person was removed from the gene pool.

This would require her to have had more then a passing knowledge of the way that things work in the outdoors... it would also have required her to be able to keep herself calm, collected, and rational as her son started getting sicker... it also may have required (if she had thought of this before he passed) to have carried her child all that way.

This is one of the things that worries me the most about going out in the back of beyond with just me and my kids... there is no way I'd be able to carry one of my children for any distance if they were seriously injured or in failing health. Especially as they get older and bigger. This is also one of the reasons that someone always knows where I am... when I expect to return... what I have with me. It is also one of the reasons that I call the Rangers wherever I am goign to be to check conditions and routes and such... "Hey... I was looking at the map/heard about this place... what do you know about the area and it's accessibility/safety?" More then once something that a Ranger has said to me has stopped me from going someplace with just me and the kids...

The problem alot of times is that what I refer to as "city folk" think "Oh Wow... someplace popular... tons of people there... I know its in the wilderness or far away from civilization.. but if there's lots of people there I won't get into trouble... and if I do someone'll be there to help me"...

Anyways... just my two cents worth....

This is a tragedy and my heart goes out the the mother of the child, and to the family. I don't know how you ever recover from a loss like this.

Merely the title of the story is enough for lots of us to believe there's a lawsuit coming.
"11 year old boys dies after mom says GPS left them stranded . . . "

Whether it's actually been claimed by them, not sure . . . but the raw "blame" in the context of Headline reeks of lawsuit. It's today's society.

Nonetheless, what a terrible situation. Couldn't imagine even myself getting stuck, let alone my child (even though i don't have one . . yet)

On a previous trip to the Whitney area, I managed to get our rented rear-wheel drive Jeep something-or-other stuck in a sand pit not far off of Movie Road(?) just north of WP Road. We had just dumped much of our unused water since our hiking for the day was done and we were headed into town (LP) to have dinner. Once stuck, however, we couldn't get cell phone coverage cuz we were on the "wrong" side of the Alabama Hills. We also couldn't get unstuck no matter what I tried. The day was nearing an end, we only had one modest bottle of water between us, and it was a pretty warm day, as I recall. We ended up walking toward LP together and finally were able to hitch a ride the rest of the way into town, and were able to get a tow truck to come out and pull our vehicle out (he almost couldn't do it).

But all this to say that the initial feeling of having our vehicle stuck in a sand pit I didn't see coming while out in the Alabama Hills near the end of a very warm day, with little water left, was not a great feeling, to say the least. Fortunately for us, our story had a happy ending (except for the $100 I had to pay the tow truck driver to pull us out).

CaT

Did 'ya sue the rental company? It must have been someone's fault! (Just kidding)

When I first read about the tragedy here in Charlotte, I don’t recall any mention about the mother of 11-year-old Carlos, Alicia Sanchez, blaming the tragedy on her GPS device.

I use GPS daily, and have been doing so for many years. I use it for hiking, mountaineering, auto travel and commercial air travel (when permitted). I used a GPS device to map the 97 Switchbacks, which you can see on BobR’s site HERE.

I’ve used GPS in doing cross-country travel in the Mojave, Anza-Borrego and Sonoran deserts. I’ve traveled through Death Valley a number of times, as many on this board have, and have camped in Death Valley. I’ve had my backpacking tent flattened by hurricane force winds blowing across Death Valley. Death Valley can be formidable under the best circumstances, especially with its incredible heat.

I was doing cross-country in the Anza-Borrego Mountains when I got caught in a freak snow storm and a whiteout. I can’t say that my GPS device saved my life (because I was backed up by map and compass, as well as an altimeter), but it sure made it easy to navigate back to my car in the storm when I had no idea where my car was because of the white-out conditions.

I’ve made mistakes with my GPS devices by inputting wrong coordinates. I remember I climbed a mountain to discover it was the wrong one. O, the GPS took me exactly where I told it, but I told it wrong.

What in the world was Alicia Sanchez thinking? I don’t doubt she set out for a wonderful overnighter with her son. Apparently she told family or friends that she was going to camp overnight in one of Death Valley’s free campsites, sightsee the next day, then return to Las Vegas.

Death Valley only has three free campsites. All of them are on the west side of the Panamint mountain range. (The initial search for Alicia and her son was done on the west side of the Panamints.) Las Vegas, of course, is east, on the other side of the Panamints.

I wonder if she was trying to take a shortcut to get across to the western side of the Panamints so that she could overnight at the Wildrose Campground, which is easily accessible and is the only all-season, free campground. The rangers discovered that she had traveled from Las Vegas on I-15 to Baker, then turned north on Highway 127 to head to Death Valley. But she turned off this main access highway on to the Saratoga Springs Road, and then turned off on the more remote Owl Hole Spring Road. This took her right up to the locked gate (to China’s Lake’s Fort Irwin area) that blocked her westward progress. Instead of staying on the graded road, she proceeded to inexplicably to drive cross-country. This, of course, was a huge mistake, since she was in no way prepared for the dangers of cross-country travel in Death Valley. Very sad. Very tragic. But to blame it on her GPS device? She might as well have blamed it on a compass. GPS devices and compasses are navigation devices, and I think most here know that these navigation devices take certain skills and training to use them properly, safely and successfully.

My heart goes out to the Sanchez family and friends of Carlos. This was a preventable tragedy, but if this sad affair can help GPS users be more cautious about GPS devices and their limitations, then some good will come out of this, and perhaps some other tragedies prevented. We can only hope.