Rescuers turn to 3 words to find lost hikers

When darkness fell on Feb. 6, one Terrapin Mountain hiker knew he was in distress and called 911. 

Big Island Volunteer Fire Department chief TJ Goff turned to the what3words app to locate the hiker. The result: it took less than 40 minutes for the search and rescue team to find him. Other Virginia search and rescue teams are also turning to the app for help in locating lost and injured people. 

The unidentified 20-something hiker told responders that he had hiked the Bedford County loop trail previously, according to Big Island Volunteer Fire Department Training Lt. Rusty Mansel. 

Alltrails, a website that ranks hiking trails, considers Terrapin Mountain Trail a challenging hike. It is steep and rocky, with turns that are sometimes hard to follow. 

On a good day, hikers can complete the trail in an average of five to six hours. That’s not how it turned out for this hiker, at least not on this day. 

The sun went down, he didn’t have a flashlight, his phone battery had dropped to 13%, and he was not dressed for an overnight stay in the woods, Mansel said. It was cold — somewhere in the 40s — and would drop to freezing overnight. 

The hiker came to a creek crossing. He had taken a wrong turn and was likely disoriented. He was going to have to get wet to continue his hike, and might not have been able to discern the depth of the water in the dark. 

“It could have been risky for him. He could have fallen, and if he’d fallen in and gotten wet, you know, hypothermia would have obviously been a big, big issue,” Mansel said. 

First responders from the Big Island and Boonsboro Volunteer Fire and Rescue departments staged the rescue from a parking area on Reed Creek Road, which terminates at Terrapin Mountain Trail. Mansel and Big Island volunteer rescue squad chief Robert Overstreet arrived on the scene with an ATV and trailer. 

“[Reed Creek Road] is not something that you’re going to be able to drive in a normal vehicle. If you do, you’re probably not going to make it very far, and you’re probably not going to make it back,” Mansel said, describing the way the pavement narrows to a steep, rocky walking trail. 

Before sending Mansel and Overstreet up the trail, Goff told the Bedford County dispatcher to direct the hiker to download the what3words app. Using that app, the hiker pinpointed his location. Up popped three precise words: junior, juggernaut, isolated. 

The hiker provided those words to the dispatcher. All he had left to do was wait.

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Chris Sheldrick, Mohan Ganesalingam and Jack Waley-Cohen launched what3words in 2013, according to the company. Sheldrick was seeking to solve a problem — as someone who organized live music events across the globe, he kept having logistical trouble when it came to his team finding the right address. Sheldrick sat down with Mohan, a mathematician, to discuss the challenges he was having with latitude- and longitude-based GPS coordinate systems, and the first three-word address algorithm was born on the back of an envelope. 

The what3words app solves the problem of users having to remember two seven-digit or longer strands of GPS coordinates.

“When you start looking [at GPS coordinates], you’ve got seven digits and all that you can transpose [and] it can get very confusing,” Mansel said, explaining that this can become more difficult in stressful situations, particularly for people unfamiliar with that system.

When cell service is available, what3words interfaces with Google and Apple Maps. When offline, the app allows navigation using an in-app compass system. 

The what3words developers randomly assigned a unique three-word combination to every 9-by-9-foot square on the globe. When users open the what3words app or load the website, they pinpoint their location, identify the three words assigned to that location, and provide just those three words to emergency services — or anyone else trying to meet up with them. 

Initially, three words from the English dictionary were randomly assigned to 57 trillion squares around the globe; the words for each location will never change, according to the company. The what3words platform is now available in 60 languages and is used in 193 countries. 

An app that was first designed to solve the annoyances of poor addressing has turned into a lifesaving tool for some. Emergency personnel around the world are using the app to quickly find and help people in need, the company says. 

In Bedford County, Mansel plugged the words into his app, and rescuers were on their way. 

“We knew enough that if we started taking Reed Creek Road up, we could get close to the proximity,” Mansel said. He rode on the back of the trailer, giving directions to Overstreet. 

As the two got closer to the location provided by what3words, they would stop and call out, listening for a verbal response. 

Overstreet and Mansel found the hiker 0.6 miles from the staging area, standing at the intersection of the trail and Reed Creek. They took him out of the woods using the ATV and trailer, Mansel said. After a health check, the hiker was returned to his vehicle at the trailhead. 

“If he had had enough light or a flashlight, he could have crossed over Reed Creek very easily. It’s only 6 inches deep at that point, crossed over and just kept coming right down the road. … But in the pitch black, with water running, not knowing what he’s going to walk into, it’s not great using your phone as a flashlight,” Mansel said. Besides, the battery was going to die soon. 

Calling for help was the right move, he said. 

First responders agree that hikers should call for help when they first realize they might be lost or in danger. After calling, lost hikers should sit down and wait for help. They should not try to find their own way out because they might wind up even more lost, said Rockbridge County Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Kevin Moore. 

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The what3words app allows first responders to identify the best route to locate lost and injured callers.

“When what3words is working perfectly, it’s going to drop me within a 3-by-3 foot area where you are,” said Brandon Cocke, Bedford County 911 communications officer. 

Fire and rescue and emergency communications departments across Virginia are adopting the platform. 

Roanoke County, which claims McAfee Knob as one of the most visited spots on the Appalachian Trail, uses what3words to locate missing and injured hikers both on and off the trail, according to Brian Clingenpeel, community outreach coordinator for Roanoke County’s Fire Administration. 

They’ve been using the app for about five years and average two trail rescues a month, Clingenpeel said. Even with what3words, it takes time to amass the equipment and personnel needed to retrieve lost and injured hikers from McAfee Knob. 

“It’s still a labor intensive and time intensive kind of rescue. It helps the dispatcher to be able to locate them quicker and give that information to us. We’ve still got to go get them,” he said.

Between the Appalachian Trail and local trails, along with a few river rescues, Botetourt ranks evenly with Roanoke County for a high number of wilderness rescues: Botetourt retrieves approximately 20 hikers annually, compared to Roanoke County’s 25. Most other counties in western and Southwest Virginia who responded to Cardinal News’ inquiry rescue fewer than a dozen hikers per year. 

Botetourt County rescues a lot of hikers who cross over into Botetourt thinking that McAfee Knob is a loop trail, and those who are hiking the Triple Crown, which includes Roanoke County’s Dragon’s Tooth and Botetourt’s Tinker Cliffs, said Daniel Murray, Botetourt’s Fire and EMS emergency manager. 

Botetourt does not use what3words, though it has the capability. Instead, it uses a system called CalTopo that allows it to share information with the state’s search and rescue team should the county need to hand the case over, according to Murray. 

Using CalTopo, every responder to an incident can see the hiker’s location and the best way to get there. Since adopting the system five years ago, Botetourt’s response time has decreased. 

Rockbridge County is just starting to incorporate what3words into its search and rescue efforts, said Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Kevin Moore. The program will be fully rolled out later this spring. He expects that using what3words will drastically shorten search times. The county responds to about a dozen lost or injured hikers each season, he said. 

If a lost hiker dials for help themselves, 911 communication departments without what3words capability can ping cell towers to determine the hiker’s location. They reference Avenza Maps, which provides a point that allows searchers to find the best way to reach the lost hiker, and off they go. 

If a concerned friend or family member calls for help, the department tries to get as much information as it can: where the hiker began, what their schedule was, what direction they were headed, Moore said. Then the department sends someone in after the hiker. Rescuers will ask if others have seen anything, and they will send up a drone. 

Searches that last more than 24 hours are unusual, he said.

Paul Hoyle is the emergency services coordinator in Grayson County. He’s also a backpacker. He sees the value in what3words technology, and said that the county has the ability to use the app to find lost and injured hikers. But they don’t take advantage of it, because the dispatchers aren’t on board yet. 

“It would help us on the worst of them. We don’t plan for the best of them. We plan for the worst of them,” Hoyle said.