Letter Re: Wife Rescue–Another Tale of GPS Over-Reliance in the Backcountry

Dear Editor:

I am writing this hoping to let others learn from my families’ ordeal. Our summer camping trip almost became a search and rescue operation.

From July 8th to the 18th, several friends and I ventured into the mountains of Arizona for a leisurely cooler [high country] camping trip. During the first half of this trip I had my three daughters with me, while my wife had stayed home near Phoenix. She planned to come up the last weekend of the camping trip as she is not a big fan of camping.

I had planned ahead for her and made arrangements with a family member for her to borrow their [Toyota] FJ Cruiser [compact SUV] with four wheel drive. I did not want her to have to drive the almost 30 miles of dirt road to our camp in her minivan. Along with the FJ came a GPS system.

I was even courteous enough to my wife and met her at the beginning of the dirt road and let her follow me back to camp so she would not get lost with my directions.

Everything so far had worked out great. On Saturday afternoon my wife became bored with the whole camping idea and decided she wanted to drive into Payson, Arizona and do some window shopping and just goof around in town.

I went to the GPS and looked up the directions for Payson for her. I knew she would have to drive at least 20 miles on a different dirt road and then follow the signs on the highway to Payson. Altogether a 50 mile drive or so. The GPS was indicating it wanted my wife to travel a different route that would add many more miles onto the trip.

To overcome this I gave her verbal directions to the Rim Road and told her to go East on it. At that point the GPS would recalculate and tell her to follow the known route to Payson. Or so I hoped. I kissed the wife and sent her on her way with two of my daughters, a GMRS radio, and her cellular telephone. She left camp at about 1 p.m.

At about 3:30 pm I decided to drive to the edge of the Mogollon Rim and make a cellular call and see how she was doing and make sure she arrived safely. I figured the trip would have taken maybe just over an hour without heavy traffic.

When I made the call she answered and sounded upset. She explained to me she followed the GPS directions from camp and the GPS had taken her to Payson through Winslow. Her trip took 2½ hours. She also explained to me that she only had a ¼ tank of gas when she left (plenty to get to Payson on the Rim Road) and had almost run out of gas following the route through Winslow.

My wife was very upset and said she was not planning on staying too long as the majority of the afternoon was now over. I began to tell her how to get back to camp and give her directions. She was still upset from her first trip and said she would just follow the GPS back to camp. When I tried to give more directions she hung up on me.

I went back to camp but worried about her and the girls for the rest of the afternoon. I was not sure what time she was planning on leaving Payson and therefore had no expected time of arrival for her. I decided that I would attempt to call her at 7 p.m. if I had not heard from her or seen her arrive.

At 6:45 I was worried and chomping at the bit. My friend drove me to the edge of the Rim to make a cellular call and attempt to reach her. I made 4 separate calls. Each time I could hear the phone connect but did not hear anyone on the other end. Shortly after the call would be lost. The fifth time, the phone connected and my wife’s upset and concerned voice was finally heard.

She begged me to come find her. She said she had followed the GPS and was lost somewhere on the Mogollon Rim. My own concern set in and I asked her to provide me with some kind of direction she was could be found. She was only able to tell me that the GPS said she was on the forest road #91.

I knew that road; it was not too far from our camp. The problem was that this road continued for several miles taking her possibly farther back into the woods. I immediately told her to stop the truck and sit in it and wait for me. The call was then lost. I was getting pretty panicked at this point and my buddy knew I was.

I told him we needed to go and find her. We went to where the 91 began and headed north. After driving 3-4 miles we began to hear what sounded like a “call” tone on the mobile GMRS radio in the truck. The bad part, the trucks radio could pick up the distant call but she would be unable to hear us if we called to her. We tried and got no response. The “call” tone continued over and over and eventually stopped. We didn’t even know if it was from my wife.

After driving almost 10 miles on the 91 I heard my wife’s voice come across the GMRS radio. She asked if I was out there. I cleared her back and she heard my transmission. I knew that with the small handheld radio she was using we had to be within 2 miles or so from her.

I talked with her on the radio back and forth to calm her as we continued down the forest road looking. Eventually we came out of a canyon and right on top of the ridge was the FJ parked in the middle of the road with the headlights on. I was overjoyed and calmed.

During the drive back to camp, I asked my wife what had occurred. She said after speaking to me and hanging up on me, she drove to Show Low, Az. She said she thought I had told her to drive there and then use the GPS to drive back to camp following its directions.

She drove to Show Low and then followed the GPS through Taylor and Snowflake and back to Winslow. There the GPS took her through the forest roads for over an hour. She was still following the GPS directions but felt she was lost.

She had made numerous attempts to call me on my cell phone but either got no response or had no service. She had all but given up when her cell phone rang and it was me calling her. The GPS directions were correct, that is to say it was taking her back to our camp, over a hundred miles out of the way.

My wife blew the whole ordeal off and blamed me for the whole issue. As we were driving to find her I began thinking and my thoughts fell on how little prepared she was for this ordeal.

I have her minivan at home set up with a full emergency kit/BOB kit. The kit could sustain her and the girls for at least 72 hours had they needed to use it. When my wife borrowed the FJ she left this kit in the minivan. I also knew that the FJ did not have any such kit in it. They had no food or shelter aside from the truck. I believed they may have had several bottles of water.

The Mogollon Rim is a large escarpment that extends from Flagstaff to the New Mexico border in a crescent shape. The Rim is the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The elevations range from 7,000’ to 8,000’. This area is crisscrossed with innumerable forest roads. She could have been anywhere in eastern Arizona.

What made matters worse; my wife is not a prepper. She thinks I am loony but allows me to continue with our families preparations as she believes I will be around to do it all if the SHTF. I know that had I not found her, and she would have wandered off the 91, she and the girls could have been lost for a long time and needed further professional rescue.

In the end everything worked out but it could have turned out very bad. I am trying to make my wife realize how bad it could have been. I am also trying to plan on ways to keep this from happening again in the future.

By the way, my wife has a new acronym translation for GPS: Giant Pile of S***.

Regards, – J.M.J.