About 8 p.m. Saturday, 26 vacationing friends and family members from Southern California, ranging in age from 2 to 70, loaded in four vehicles and left Bryce Canyon National Park for the Grand Canyon.
En route, they stopped to see Grosvenor Arch. Then, headed for Arizona, they got stranded on the edge of a 500-foot cliff.
The incident is part of a growing problem of people relying on technology to find a quick route across an area of deep canyons, washes and primitive roads that could be too much even for off-highway vehicles.
In the Saturday episode, the GPS instructed the group to head south, but it would have been better to return to Cottonwood Canyon Road, said Kane County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Tracy Glover.
About 1 a.m. Sunday morning, the group used a cell phone to call for help.
"They were pretty upset and panicking at first, but at about 6 in the morning they were able to give us the coordinates," Glover said.
That was after deputies explained how to use their GPS to determine coordinates. The group was found about 11:45 a.m. Sunday at Four Mile Bench in northern Kane County.
"All of them were thirsty, but no one was injured," Glover said. Deputies gave the group food, water and fuel.
There are many roads and paths inside the 1.9-million-acre monument, spread across Kane and Garfield counties, and many are not regularly patrolled, said Bureau of Land Management spokesman Larry Crutchfield.
It is not the first time Staircase visitors have unsuccessfully used a GPS to pick a route, Glover said. Since its 1996 creation, dozens have been stranded after following GPS information.
Kane County Sheriff Lamont Smith said people should know a GPS has its limits.
"It's just a piece of equipment that's only as good as the data programmed into it," Smith said. "It can show which direction to go, but not the 500-foot cliff where you can't go any farther."
Crutchfield said many visitors have too much faith in technology.
"The GPS is no substitute for good judgment," he said. "People can start down a nice, graded dirt road and it can soon turn into boulders and deep washes, but they continue driving instead of turning around. I don't understand it. The shortest way is not always the quickest way."
