I've been an active member of a search and rescue team in southeast Alaska since 2002. This has been a really interesting period to be involved in SAR. When I started, very few people had cell phones or GPS devices. Then came a period where almost everyone had a cell phone. Then people had cell phones with embedded GPS. Now we're seeing many people with GPS-enabled mapping software such as Gaia on their devices.

I haven't analyzed the data, but these trends have definitely changed our callout pattern. We used to get regular calls for people who were overdue, and the only communication was with the person who reported them overdue. When cell phones first came out, it seemed we got a few more calls from people who had gone less prepared. But we're a coastal community, and handheld VHF radios played the role of a cell phone in our community before cell phones came out, so basic communication didn't change drastically at first.

I think things started to change once everyone had a phone, and there were enough towers to have decent coverage throughout our mountainous area. We get far fewer callouts where there's been no direct communication with the missing person. Now we tend to have direct communication with the person, or we are talking to a reporting party who has had some direct communication with the missing person. We are responding to known locations more often - the person is lost, but we know where they are and our mission is to reach them, and guide them safely out. Or they're injured/ immobile, and we go right to them and evacuate them.

Now we're starting to see people who are following others' routes using apps like Gaia, and getting in over their heads. People see a route on Gaia, and they think it's a trail or a clear route. In our mountains, experienced people are often bushwhacking through steep terrain where there's only one route that works, and if you don't know how to navigate that terrain you can get into dangerous cliffed-out areas quickly. And once you get off route, it can be really hard to get back to a safe place because there's no safe direct route back to the GPS track.

All of this has been exacerbated by the local effects of climate change. We're in a rainforest, and the vast majority of our days used to be overcast with drizzle. A good deal of our callouts were for people who went out in a break of clear weather, then got stuck when the clouds rolled back in and they couldn't see where to go. We get much longer periods of clear weather - weeks and months instead of hours and days - so people are going out in clear weather and coming back in clear weather. We also have ice fields and glaciers that are receding, leaving behind blue ice that's much more difficult to navigate than old snow, and loose silt and rocks that's much easier to slide on than exposed, weathered dirt with vegetation.

The interaction of people and wilderness is always going to be there, and the tools available are always going to influence how people interact with the wilderness. It's not always getting better or worse. People adapt to the tools available, and sometimes use them to get into more dangerous situations, and sometimes use them to avoid and get out of dangerous situations.