TRUST IN GPS LEAVES DARTMOUTH MAN STRANDED
GPS instructions leaves Dartmouth man stranded on snowmobile trail
A Dartmouth man will never trust GPS again after spending nearly 12 hours stranded on a snowmobile trail near Williamsdale, Cumberland County this week.
John Trainor set out from Dartmouth very early in the morning in a rented sport utility vehicle. He was heading to a prayer camp near Riviere-du-loup, Que., when the GPS unit he purchased for the trip told him to get off Highway 104 between the Cobequid Pass toll plaza and Oxford.
That began a 12-hour ordeal that left him tired, cold and disoriented and stuck on a trail in the Cobequid Highlands.
“I don’t want to give all the credit to the GPS, I think God had a plan for me,” Trainor said in a telephone interview from his Dartmouth home. “It could have ended much differently and I realize I could have died in that field, but I did a lot of praying that day and said if this is the way God wants me to go then it’s time to go.”
After paying the toll at the toll plaza he continued on until he found a gas station with a coffee shop. He filled the tank of his vehicle, grabbed a coffee and breakfast sandwich and got back on the road. Not being used to driving a lot and using a GPS unit he thought he followed its instructions, when in fact he got off the highway onto secondary roads and finally a snowmobile trail in back of Williamsdale.
“I kept following that stupid little machine because I figured it knew what it was doing,” he said.
Trainor, who is retired from
the TD Bank, said he never realized he was in trouble until the GPS told him to turn onto a road that looked more like a field. Trusting the GPS, he made the turn and tried plowing through the path until he got hung up on snow.
“A half an hour later I was on a bumpy path. The vehicle was able to drive through that,” he said. “I kept going and going, thinking I would get a loop that would take me in a circle and get me back on the highway where I could head toward Moncton. That never happened. I got to a spot that I thought to myself, ‘that’s not even a road,’ but I figured I’d gotten this far, I need to keep going. When I turned onto the field I plowed as far as I could until I got stuck. I couldn’t move forward or backward.”
He briefly considered trying to walk out the way he came in but
feared getting lost and decided to stay with the vehicle and let whatever God had planned for him take place.
Shortly after 10:30 p.m., a pair of snowmobilers were passing on the trail when they noticed Trainor’s vehicle and knocked on the window to see if he was OK.
One of the snowmobilers used his cellphone to call the RCMP and the group transported Trainor back to the road where he was met by police and EHS. He was assessed by paramedics and medically cleared, after which he accepted a ride to a hotel in Amherst.
David Noiles of Noiles Towing went to retrieve the vehicle the next day. The terrain was so tough his tow truck couldn’t get to the SUV. With the help of Kurt Sherman, who lent his tractor to the effort, they were able to remove the SUV from its predicament.