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Hiker rescued off B.C. cliffside after taking non-existent Google Maps trail
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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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I've been there though. Bike tour with my girlfriend. Weather report is fine, road is marked clearly on map.
Caught in a torrential thunderstorm at the top of the mountain, road down to the hotel is blocked off since last month but its not visible anywhere online.
We take a side trail marked on the map. Google says its there, OSMAnd says its there. It technically is there, but it clearly hasn't been maintained in years, and it is clearly not bikeable, but we have no other alternative to get down the mountain (other than go back the way we came through the storm).
Cue to us carrying our bikes down a steep "path" (read: vertical border of some farmer's field, so marked as a path for legal reasons) under a quickly darkening sky. The village below is reachable, we just have to survive the drop. No turning back, tensions are high, the bulls in the field next to us are eyeing us warily, and who knows how friendly they are.
We make it down by the skin of our teeth, onto a real road, cycle the next 30km to the hotel, and eat a victory pizza. That pizza, to this day, sticks out in my mind as the most tastiest meal I've ever had.
Nice. These are the moments we feel truly alive
It was also a nice bonding moment between my gf and I. Up to that point I had no idea how she would react in a crisis; suffice to say she took note of the situation, remained cool as a cucumber under my silent but visible duress, and did her part without complaining, only voicing her concerns after we made it out. Keeper.
100%. Relationships tempered in fire early on really help dealing with other crisis down the road, to say nothing of the day-to-day issues that pop up.
Source: Similar thing happened to us and we’ve been married almost two decades and are still going strong. We are each other’s ride-or-die bitches and best friends.
Glad to hear it :-)