Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
A friend of mine spent her 50th birthday hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. The whole summer really. This was before Garmin bought them, she had a DeLorme, and used the same tracking feature. It worked great.
Last weekend I got a puncture I wasn't able to repair, and did the road walk of shame back to my car. In an area with more bears than people. We had agreed on a time for Beth to hear from me before she worried, but I was late. It took me half an hour to walk back to the car, an hour to drive to the pavement, and then another hour to drive back to the freeway where I got reception and could pull over and send a message. Being able to send a "I had a mechanical problem, I'm going to be late but everything is ok" message would have saved a lot of grief.
Sure. I just found the whole thing clunky and kind of ad hoc. After having used it and needing it to work in a fairly serious medical situation 200 miles away from an urban center in the boonies of Bolivia, I'd have to say that I'm less confident in it than when I bought it. I'd have to say that the promises their advertising makes are marginally accurate. YMMV, but I'd look for more local solutions that may be more workable. For example, there is a very Baofeng tiny UHF radio that has been pretty good about hitting repeaters far away. If you are in range of a repeater, I could see that working pretty well. Different methods probably make sense for different geographies.
When my wife and daughter where on a backpacking trip last year in the Enchantments, the track was all over the place and after looking at it when they got back, not accurate and wildly inaccurate at times. So....... don't know what to say except that it didn't meet my expectations.
But, it did sort of work. I just didn't feel that having that as a lifeline in case of an emergency it was anything better than tenuous at best. Not exactly confidence inspiring. Like I said before 2 to 2.5 out of 5.
J.