How many people here ride with a Garmin inReach or other SOS/satellite communication device?
I've been thinking of picking one up for the upcoming riding season as I'm planning more remote/longer rides, but the high price and the on-going subscription are making me hesitate.
If you have one, have you found it to be worth the cost? Ever had to use it in an emergency situation?
If you don't have one, any reason why?
We rode around the world for YEARS in some of the most remote places without a spot locator or emergency beacon.
However, we just picked up a Garmin inReach mini a few weeks ago because of the kind of riding we're now doing.
Back then we were always on some road that took us (and other people) somewhere - another town or tourist sight. If you broke down and waited long enough, somebody was bound to come by and you could ask for assistance.
These days, where we live, we are riding trails that sometimes go nowhere - maybe a nice lookout, or maybe just the trail itself is scenic or twisty. But then you either have to double-back on the same trail or take another small route to get back to the main road. The roads in rural BC are less-traveled and during the shoulder season, even recreational traffic dwindles down to a trickle. In April and October, there's nobody on the trails and if you break down or get hurt, nobody is going to come across your bike or body until the summer is in full swing.
So, do you really need a Spot locator or emergency beacon? Depends. If you believe you will encounter nobody on your ride, and the trail is technical or gnarly, then I'd recommend it. If you trigger your SOS on a lightly traveled road with just a little bit of traffic, chances are that a local farmer or someone else will probably come across you first, long before Search and Rescue is deployed to your location.
We brought our inReach to Death Valley a few weeks ago. However, we discovered that a US National Park is the last place you need something like that. There's so much recreational traffic, someone will always be by to render assistance.
We opted for the Freedom Plan, which lets you turn on or suspend the service as needed. It's advertised as only $20/month, but what they don't tell you is there's a $50 annual activation fee, so our first month turned out to be around $78 CAD. Pricey.
But now, we can just turn on and off the service for the summer months, or whenever we decide to go off into the bush in the shoulder or off-season. You don't have to pay for the months that you don't use it.
The inReach Mini is kind of a stripped down emergency beacon. The inputs on the device are very rudimentary, and is painful if you want to type out long messages. The tiny LCD screen is incapable of displaying maps or any kind of useful information other than Lat and Long.
What makes the Mini a versatile tool is the ability to connect to an app on your smartphone via Bluetooth. Then you can use the satellite connection to type out and receive full txt messages on your phone via the Iridium network, as well as display your progress and orientation on a map that you've pre-downloaded on your phone.
The inReach Mini is capable of sending out an emergency SOS signal and that is probably the only useful button on the device. It will alert and mobilize local Search and Rescue as well as send out SMS messages to the emergency contacts you've defined on your profile.
We never activated the SOS feature, so don't know how effective it is. But the rest of the feature set on the inReach is well thought-out and the integration with the smartphone app isn't too annoying (as most device-to-app integration are).
