Three inexperienced hikers had to be rescued after becoming stranded overnight on California's Mount Shasta, with authorities saying their reliance on an AI chatbot for trip planning was a "critical misstep" that contributed to the ordeal. The Siskiyou County sheriff's office said the men, from Roseville, had used Google Gemini to plan their route and packing list, and the tool advised them to bring far less food and water than they ended up needing when their planned one-day climb turned into a multi-day emergency.

The group camped at roughly 8,400 feet and set off at 3am on a day they expected to summit within eight hours, but did not reach the top until 7pm, well past the recommended noon turnaround. Descending in darkness, they strayed off the Clear Creek Route into the more hazardous Mud Creek Canyon, where one man fell and injured his knee, forcing them to spend the night stranded. US Forest Service rangers and county search-and-rescue volunteers reached them the next morning, treated the injury and brought all three safely back to the trailhead. The sheriff's office urged climbers to call the local ranger station for accurate route information, never rely solely on AI for trip planning, carry backup navigation tools and always turn back by noon.