Annoyed Rancher to Lots of Hikers: Google Maps Is Wrong

People were led to his property instead of the trail
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 13, 2016 5:05 PM CDT
Annoyed Rancher to Lots of Hikers: Google Maps Is Wrong
Google says the directions to the Fort George Canyon Provincial Park have been fixed and now take users to the trailhead.   (Google Maps)

Canadian rancher Pete Stoner was having a heck of a time getting Google to change its mapping tool to direct people in search of the Fort George Canyon Provincial Park in British Columbia to the trailhead instead of his private property. He says it all started in 2014, when he was working on a tractor and saw three guys open his chained gate and try to walk through after using Google Maps, reports the CBC. Never mind that there was still a river and large rock wall in the way. Since then, he's counted scores of people—some who are belligerent when they learn they must backtrack two hours to get through, but most of whom are just confused. "Last weekend I counted 62 people," he says.

The frustrated sawmill operator and his wife Maggie tried to contact Google several times by filling out an online form, to no avail. "It's like, 'Thank you for your input, now go pound sand," says Stoner, who even took his problem to B.C. Parks in December. But the mapping tool is crowd-sourced, so not long after the CBC's story ran last week, people scrambled to try to fix the map. "I was like, 'Oh! Poor guy!'" says Google Maps Regional Reviewer Alex Duffield. He added a path, marked the Stoners' driveway private, and then approved two other edits that redirect users to the actual trailhead, and Nicole Bell of Google followed up to write that the correction is live, reports the CBC. Good news for Stoner and Google Maps users alike, then—there's no longer a private ranch, river, and hundred-foot rock wall between hikers and their destination. (See how a nonexistent island ended up on mapping tools.)

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