KETCHIKAN, Alaska — A lost hiker used his smartphone’s GPS function to help rescuers find him.
The Ketchikan Daily News reports (http://is.gd/WboJnN) a 16-year-old boy on an excursion off a cruise ship got lost Wednesday while coming down Deer Mountain.
He wound up in a ravine above Lake Forest Park, about a half mile off the trail.
The unnamed boy got out his cellphone and called 911. Rescuers then told him to turn on the phone’s GPS function, and he was able to read off his longitude and latitude..
Jerry Kiffer, chief of the rescue squad, says the GPS allowed them to find him within three hours. That type of search in the past could have taken two or three days.
He says GPS helped quicken another rescue last year.
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