Re: Dangers of getting to isolated spots on the C&TS

BTW, another really great piece of technology that folks may want to consider if they spend a lot of time in the back country is the Personal Locator Beacon or (PLB.) These devices are small, and very easy to carry around. They contain a transmitter as well as a GPS. If you get in trouble and have a no-kidding, life-threatening emergency, deploying that device and turning it on will get you help relatively quickly. Within minutes, various rescue coordination centers around the globe will have your position and will get started on getting help to you. The lady that I mentioned who died on Mt. Washington had one of those with her, but when she deployed it, she did not position it properly so its antennas could see the sky. As result, the device did not transmit a GPS position. The SARSAT satellites did give us rough positions based on the doppler effect, but with winds gusting well over 100 mph and blowing snow reducing visibility to near zero, the position data we were getting was not precise enough to enable a ground rescue team to go direct to her location. This seriously delayed anyone getting to her. In the end, it may not have mattered. The rescue folks determined that by the time she popped that PLB, she was already half frozen to death.

Get a PLB and read the manual before you venture out with it. They work. I personally was involved in a rescue where we pulled a guy off the side of a mountain and had him in the hospital less than 5 hours after he crashed. He lives today because he had one of these devices.

/Kevin Madore