PORTLAND, Ore. - In a holiday hurry, Jeramie Griffin piled his family into the car and asked his new GPS for the quickest way from his home in the Willamette Valley across the Cascade Range.
It said he could shave 40 minutes off the time of the roundabout route he usually takes to the in-laws’ place.
Following the directions, he and his wife headed east on Christmas Eve and into the mountains, turning off a state highway onto local roads and finally getting stuck in the snow.
They had no cellphone service and ran short on formula for their 11-month-old daughter. After taking exploratory hikes, trying to dig out, and spending the night in their car, the distraught couple filmed a goodbye video.
Like two other parties of holiday travelers who followed GPS directions smack into Oregon snowbanks, Griffin and family were eventually rescued. But their peril left law enforcement officers perplexed about drivers who occasionally set aside common sense when their GPS systems suggest a shortcut.
“Did everybody just get these for Christmas?’’ asked Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, leader of one rescue effort.
In Griffin’s case, in fact, the GPS device was a Christmas gift, from his parents. He used it for the first time to plan the trip to central Oregon.
The trip is one he’d made many times before, following a route travelers have found reliable since at least the days of the Oregon Trail. But, he said, a shortcut the GPS device suggested was attractive.
“We were in such a hurry to get over there, we programmed it in the driveway and went ahead,’’ he said.