Personal Locator Beacon

[bullfrog !]

Not so well in deep canyons I understand.

 

[Gr8ful]

Or deep forest cover. Needs to see sky.

 

[user 37921]

I bought an InReach Mini and the monthly subscription when I was doing a lot of solo backpacking on the Colorado Trail last year. My mom really likes to be able track me and sends me notes. I keep it plugged in and on in the van all the time so she can see where I'm traveling. It's a comfort for her but it is also a thing she can engage with and follow along virtually with me. It's hard to find engagement opportunity as our bodies get old and limit our activities. It's priceless for that aspect for her.

 

[FlipperFla]

I googled "rescue insurance" and one of the sites was particularly informative, it was entitled
Accident and Rescue Insurance Tips Part One from "The backcountry skiing blog".
"https://www.wildsnow.com/10177/accident-insurance-rescue-aac-global/"

The author has personal experience with some of the different groups and is fairly opinionated.

We went with a company called Global Rescue, about $500 a yr. for 2. and an ACR Rescue Link. We each carry a 2M walkie talkie in our packs loaded with SAR and other emergency channels. Getting and emergency extraction is one thing, paying for it is a whole different matter.

 

[Frood]

iPhone 14 or newer has satellite emergency calling built in similar to the emergency personal locators. Not sure if there are any apps or anything that capitalize on the interval location tracking/reporting for this function yet or not.

The guy who was just in the news about being rescued in the grand canyon... it was this function on one of the friends iPhone that was used to call for the rescue.

 

[PineyCruisin]

Purchased a Garmin inReach Mini for our trip to AK and got a lot of use out of it. We purchased it specifically for emergency situations in dead zones but found it useful for other purposes as well.

The device itself is expensive but the cheapest base plan ($15/month after paying a $35 yearly subscription fee) to use the satellite service was more than enough for us. You are able to send unlimited "check in" messages to 3 family members in addition to 10 custom messages/location share points month. More expensive plans give you more custom messages/share points to use.

The inReach also gave us the ability to get weather forecast for any location at any time, vital to us for planning when there was no cell data, which was very often. Each weather request made via satellite went against the monthly custom messages allotment.

The biggest use I got was the navigation and tracking features while hiking. Not only for the SOS but the 'breadcrumb' trail left when tracking in case you needed to hike back the same way (also have a hiking app on phone but you can never have enough redundancy) .

Worth every penny for our trip.