I am a NY certified SAR crew boss with a trained volunteer team. I get the weekly SAR reports from the NYSDEC Rangers, almost all involving the too popular very highly trafficked High Peaks area of the Adirondacks. Every weekend will see one to several incidents. To their credit the majority of incidents are resolved quickly within a few hours by Rangers, and do not require the trained extra manpower from trained volunteers. Many are initiated with the subject's cell phone call to 911, which is relayed to DEC Dispatch. Rangers are usually on the trail within the hour. Some involve serious injuries, but I'd say most are evenly split between "lower leg injury" and "unable to find trail on the way down from a climb". Very few are initiated by SPOT, fewer still by activating a PLB.
[The Skalak PLB incident was really an oddball. I've paddled to the place where he called from a couple of times and explored the nearby land. Where he called from is at the end of a long broad beaver meadow on a narrow slow moving deep water river (really just a creek there), easy to paddle. A couple of minor beaver dams holding back little water are no real obstacle. If he was unable to canoe out after a freak early snowstorm, there is a hunter's hiking trail that nearly parallels the edge of the beaver meadow, easy to find and follow back to the road where he parked. Even without finding the trail it is not difficult to walk directly out.]
While it is true that cell phone calls to 911 have resulted in DEC Rangers saving lives, from what I read and from talking with Ranger friends, I am convinced that many of the calls are made by inexperienced hikers getting in over their head, including those who suffered an injury. Injuries aside, the attitude is pervasive of "I have a way to bailout if I get into trouble, I'll just call the rangers and get a helicopter". If they don't say it, they think it. It is expected that the phone will always work with unlimited battery life, and that there is cell coverage everywhere (far from true).
More and more people with little to no experience, no equipment or ability to make a fire or shelter, improperly dressed, and with zero navigation skills venture where they don't belong and would never have done so without the false impression that they are safe with the phone. The temptation to call when simply temporarily confused is just too great.
I learned how to navigate and bushwhack in remote areas by doing it, by using map and compass to plan and observe. No cell phones and no GPS back then. I've been mixed-up and confused plenty of times. But by paying attention to my navigation, stopping to think about it, and taking a few minutes of brain power I always found my way without significant problem. Indeed, such incidents are a rush, and discovering my own way out of the situation is incredibly satisfying. Mistakes will be made, but the lessons they provide mean those mistakes are not to be made again. How many of those instant cell phone calls would not have to be made if people prepared better and took the time to use a little brain power? Better that kind of lesson with accumulating the right kind of experience, than to tie up several Rangers keeping them from true emergency duties.
I have a SPOT because it is mandatory equipment for all boats in the Yukon River races. We must have it turned on in track mode, automatically transmitting our location every 10 minutes, and especially where we stop and start for a mandatory 6-hour rest period each "night on the 1000 mile race. Without those transmissions there could be a significant time penalty added to our finish time. The trick is to mount the device horizontally so that it has a clear view of the sky. Done that way, we had very few lost 10 minute transmissions, generally due to blockage from the landscape. In spite of what was stressed by the race director, some paddlers just stuck their SPOT in a pack or oriented it randomly in a pocket. Some teams were given as much as a 9-hour penalty because of it.
In addition to the automatic tracking signal, SPOT also offers a couple of preplanned non-emergency information signals. In our case, for example, one of those signals would tell our pit crew that we are ok but unable to complete the race, please meet us at the next downstream take-out (which might still be a couple of hundred miles away). In 4 races so far, we haven't had to do that (yet).
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