{"id":4764,"date":"2011-01-01T11:20:43","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T15:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=4764"},"modified":"2011-01-01T12:11:16","modified_gmt":"2011-01-01T16:11:16","slug":"the-right-time-to-ping-your-rescue-beacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2011\/01\/01\/the-right-time-to-ping-your-rescue-beacon\/","title":{"rendered":"The right time to ping your rescue beacon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uniondemocrat.com\/20101231102183\/News\/Local-News\/Missing-men-found\">This little news item<\/a> from California reminded me there are right and wrong times to ping your rescue beacon.  Scenario:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/spot.jpg\" alt=\"Spot satellite messenger\" title=\"Spot satellite messenger\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4770\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Two guys go out winter camping, get caught in a white-out almost immediately.  Snow covers their tracks and they get lost.<\/li>\n<li>Wisely, they stick together and set up camp.<\/li>\n<li>They ping their rescue beacon.<\/li>\n<li>SAR team comes out into the blizzard and finds them 100 feet from the parking lot where they started out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>  \u201cThey didn\u2019t need any help except to find their way out,\u201d Wilson said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, yuppie 911 or an urgent call for help in a genuine emergency? <!--more--> <\/p>\n<p>First off, let&#8217;s be clear: the guys got home safe, the rescue beacon took the SAR team right to them; a problem fixed isn&#8217;t a problem anymore.  Nobody asked us to play judge and jury, in any case, but it occurred to me that it couldn&#8217;t hurt to develop a list of questions to ask if you own a rescue beacon and find yourself in a fix. Here&#8217;s mine:  <\/p>\n<p><strong>1) Does anybody need immediate medical attention? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If not, the likelihood of requiring an SAR crew is probably pretty small. <\/p>\n<p><strong>2) How long could you survive with the gear you&#8217;re carrying? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Remember the Rule of Threes, which says you can survive: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Three hours without warmth.<\/li>\n<li>Three days without water.<\/li>\n<li>Three weeks without food.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If have the proper gear for an overnight backpacking trip, you&#8217;re probably in very little danger, no matter how lost you may be. With shelter, insulation\/fire and a water supply, you can last for days out there. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hey, I had to be back at work on Monday&#8221; or &#8220;well, I didn&#8217;t want to worry anybody&#8221; are not urgent enough reasons to invoke the costs and risks of a rescue.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>3) Are you motivated by an urge to get your money&#8217;s worth? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Remember, the few hundred bucks you paid for the gadget and the monthly fee are trivial compared to cost of sending a rescue out into the woods. And you could get charged for rescue, depending on who&#8217;s doing the rescuing. <\/p>\n<p>Every rescue call exposes SAR people to risk and takes them away from more urgent emergencies. Ignore that voice whispering, &#8220;hey, you paid good money for this thing.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><strong>4) Is it obvious that you&#8217;re royally screwed?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> Let&#8217;s give our snow-campers the benefit of the doubt and assume they realized the No. 1 risk of winter outings is getting lost in a white-out, and the best way to prepare for that danger is to take a working GPS unit along, using its &#8220;trackback&#8221; feature to get you back where you came from. <\/p>\n<p>So they&#8217;re out there in the white-out, trying to navigate with their GPS unit, but everything goes wrong &#8212; batteries die in the cold, they forgot to recharge their backup batteries and their back-up compass is sitting on the kitchen counter back home. <\/p>\n<p>They stumble around for hours in the dark before giving up and pitching their tent; during the night it collapses under the weight of 18 inches of fresh snow. <\/p>\n<p>All very bad, all very scary. But does it cross the Royally Screwed Threshold? A few examples of fate handing it to you royally:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Broken fibula 15 miles from the trailhead<\/li>\n<li>Unconscious climbing partner 1,300 feet up El Capitan<\/li>\n<li>Treed by pack of hungry wolves.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The defining feature of Royally Screwed is an insurmountable obstacle between you and a safe return to civilization. Corollary:  ingenuity and dogged determination won&#8217;t get you out of it.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>5) Have you exhausted every option except calling in the cavalry?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If so, then click away (and pray that it works as advertised).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This little news item from California reminded me there are right and wrong times to ping your rescue beacon. Scenario: Two guys go out winter camping, get caught in a white-out almost immediately. Snow covers their tracks and they get&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2011\/01\/01\/the-right-time-to-ping-your-rescue-beacon\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4764"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4774,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions\/4774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}