Rescuers say a 16-year-old's Claude-planned Crown Mountain hike led him off the trail; stranded at the Widowmaker arete, helicopter extraction, no injury
North Shore Rescue (NSR), the search and rescue team that extracted him, told CTV News that a 16-year-old boy rode the Grouse Mountain gondola at about 8 a.m. on Saturday 3 October 2026 and asked Claude, Anthropic's AI chatbot, to plan a trip to Crown Mountain in British Columbia. According to NSR search manager Paul Markey, the tool's route sent the boy down Crown Pass and up through Crater Slabs and Crown Couloir before its instructions led him off the trail route; he continued through difficult terrain and called for help from the base of the final headwall of the Widowmaker arete, a technical climbing wall. NSR was called at about 3:30 p.m., two rescue technicians were lowered from a helicopter to a point above him because he was too close to the vertical wall for a direct approach, and he was extracted by about 6:30 p.m. Markey said a fall would have resulted in significant injury or potentially death and that the boy was very scared. No injury is reported. The account rests on NSR's statements and task debrief as reported by CTV News; the chatbot exchange itself has not been published, and a relaying outlet noted that earlier reporting had not named the tool.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 07/10/2026