Why I'll Never Hike Without the Garmin InReach Again

hey y'all Dixie here today I want to talk to you about my favorite luxury item I carried on my thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail and that is the Garmin inReach Explorer plus now I used to be one of those people that was like I'll be fine I don't need any kind of SOS device or a personal locator beacon you know a lot of people back in the day didn't have that technology and they were just fine and I know there are a lot of old timers and folks who have been backpacking for years and years that are like you know I've survived just fine without any of that stuff and I don't need it well also we're gonna mug Gatewood through hikes Appalachian Trail with what I tarpon in a pair of heads and you know you don't see all the people that make those claims like I you don't need that new technology stuff doing things the way that she did it right so I guess my point before I get started is to say that it's okay to want to be as safe as possible it doesn't mean that you're not tough or that it shows a lack of experience or anything like that I used to be of that mindset and after I had some pretty sketchy experiences in the Sierra Nevada during my through hike the PCT in 2017 I decided that I wanted some device to be able to let people know that I was okay or to call for help if I needed it now if you're not familiar with the inReach it's basically a device that communicates through satellite so you're able to text message two ways you're able to send messages and receive them and have basically a conversation you can message to a cell phone you can message to an email address or even in reach to in reach it's like old-school texting so there are no photos or videos or anything like that but being able to communicate from person to person is wonderful and this is probably the biggest reason I got the in reach because letting my mother know that I was alive and accounted for and being able to send her my exact location I knew you just gave her so much peace of mind and me too because if I was expecting a certain stretch to last three days or four days and it ended up taking me five or six and if I didn't get cell service to let somebody know they might be worried it just gave me peace of mind me to relax a little bit knowing that the people at home were relaxed a little bit the inReach also allows you to track and share your progress on a trip so there is a web-based map share portal that allows you to share certain information with people you can set the in reach to where it will record waypoints at a certain time interval and share that information there and you can also share your location on a blog or a website through social media if you choose to do that I know a lot of folks who are doing a hike for maybe a certain cause like fundraising might do that because they've got a significant following kind of watching their progress and maybe cheering them on I would use a little caution with that me personally I only like specific people that I have selected to know where I am exactly at any given location so you know just be a little careful with that and make sure you're okay with the people who have access to that information so if you've ever looked at a Garmin in reach you might notice that it doesn't have a keyboard and just to let you know it's not touchscreen so when you're messaging you have to use these little over arrows and select buttons for kind of each character so one of the things that I really liked about it is that you can link it to the earth mate app on your smart phone that way you can do all of your texting through there it has a little keyboard and you can even do emojis if you're into that kind of thing but I just like the convenience of having another option as far as sending text messages rather than you know / / / click / / / click not only does the messaging pair but also the ability to store waypoints look at the weather call for help through SOS you know all of the functions that you pretty much have on the device you can also do through the app on your phone another reason I chose the in reach Explorer plus is because I like the idea of having some form of backup navigation I did not carry a compass and topo maps on any three of the through hacks that I did like I always say I'm not suggesting that y'all don't carry those things I'm just saying that I did not and so on the CDT I liked having some form of backup navigation and the inReach Explorer plus actually has a lot of topo maps already pre-loaded in you the device the CDT there was actually like a dotted line for that trail in the in reach now it would not be my prime source of navigation so I would definitely still want a smartphone with gut hook but if my phone were to break or it was to die and I still had some power on my in reach it was just nice to have some form of backup navigation and you know having the topos and everything like that was pretty convenient now the in reach S II does not have those pre-loaded topo maps there are several differences not anything real major you know it still has a lot of the same functions but I think it's only about a fifty dollar difference between the SE E and the Explorer plus and to me that 50 bucks is definitely worth it to be able to use it as a backup navigation source one of the functions that I didn't use on the inReach until probably over halfway through the CDT was the weather function and it's powered through dark sky I don't know if y'all are familiar with that app but to the best of my knowledge I think if you have the app on your phone you have to actually have cell service for it to triangulate the weather to your location but if you use the inReach it goes through satellite I just liked having the weather app I mean I know the best way to check the weather is to look at the sky right but I like to know kind of what to expect for the next day or so especially in situations where like towards the end and glacier there was so much snow falling and I didn't know because the weather can change so fast what was really going to happen so being able to be on the ground and know like okay I'm gonna check this weather and see how much snow they're expecting to fall pretty much right here to know whether I need to go ahead up and over this pass and push and get that done today or you know whether there isn't gonna be any more snow tonight so it's okay to wait till the morning and I know some of y'all are like check the weather out on the trail like you're getting fancy but again this is a luxury item and this is one of the reasons that I really liked it so if you're wondering how the SOS function works it is not something I have personally done so I can't speak to an exact experience but there is a button on the side here that says SOS it is protected with a little bird casing so it's not something that you're gonna push on accident and beckon you know the authorities to come help you it's going to be something that you're gonna push intentionally because you need some help so what I understand is that the company geo switch apparently has saved people or assisted in saving people in like 140 different countries somebody will respond to you on there and kind of feel out the severity of the situation if they need to contact somebody for you for help they will contact the folks who need to come out and rescue you you know the local authorities and all that and I assume if you're unable to respond it'll still send them your location and you can probably rest assured but you're unconscious that somebody will come out and you know at least check out the situation but if you are interacting with them so say you've fallen down and broken your ankle and they're sending somebody out to get you you know they will keep in touch with you until the situation is resolved and kind of give you updates etas and things like that if you'd like to see some tutorials about how to set it up and how to actually use the features of in reach has Garmin has several videos to help you with that on their website so I'll include the link to those videos in the video description of this video there's a lot of videos if you're wondering how durable these are this device lasted me the entire CDT and it looks in pretty good shape I mean the screen isn't even really that scratched up you know it's not dented up I mean it looks like it's been used but considering I carried it on a 3,000 mile trail and used it every day it's doing pretty good so it is rugged its impact resistant it's got kind of rubbery covering around the edges where it's black here and also while you don't want to go do water sports with it you know swimming and skiing and all that stuff it is resistant to the elements so you'll be fine with it getting rained on and snowed on or splash you know things like that one of the things I was concerned about is how long is the battery life on this thing and inReach claims that if you have the tracking set to a 10 minute interval that the battery should last you up to 100 hours also they claim that if the device is turned off completely that the battery will last up to three years now I know that doesn't do you any good if it's turned off but it just shows that it is a good battery in the device and to speak to that I turned mine on a minute ago after having it off for about two months now where I had charged it up during my last stretch on the CDT and it was at 100% so it hadn't even gone down one percent in two months of just having it stored and off what I found on my through heck is the enriched generally lasted me about five days and that is with messaging very frequently every day and storing waypoints once - twice a day so it really does last a pretty long time now if you're out for a long stretch and you're using it frequently it does charge through a micro USB cord so you can hook it up to your backup battery bank if you use you know an anchor charger or something like that one way I conserve battery was to make sure that my messages weren't auto checking so the inReach will actually check for messages on whatever interval you set it to so I made sure that mine was set to manual so I had to you know manually press a button to check for messages so that way it was only checking it maybe every few hours instead of at a higher frequency another thing about the battery I noticed that you know how my cell phone tends to die more rapidly if it's in colder weather I did not notice that with the inReach it seemed to hold its charge just fine in colder or warmer weather and finally you don't have to worry about running down the battery because it's you know in some pocket or something like that on your pack and it's mashing buttons because these buttons you have to really kind of mash down on them for the screen to be lit up or something like that or maybe if you like to keep it off some of the time personally I like to have mine on the whole time because you never know when something can happen but say you left it off of a certain part of the day you don't have to worry about it turning on on accident because you have to mash the power button and then it'll come on and ask you do you want to turn it on and then you have to toggle over and then select you know yes I would like to turn it on now when you use the inReach you have to make sure that it is in an open area so you don't want be under a thick force to the area it will still eventually work so I slept in forested areas and messaged from my tent or even when I was in the Gila River area so kind of down in those canyons with the real high rock walls and all that those were the times that I noticed it took the longest to send and receive messages which can be a little frustrating when you're trying to communicate something but it's much better than having no service at all so again most the time it wasn't an issue and I was able to get messages through quickly and there was never a time where I could not get a message through for the whole 3,000 miles you don't have to stop in one location or anything like that just to send messages back and forth I messaged while I was hiking you know I know texting and hiking is almost as dangerous and and maybe even more at times than texting and driving but I am guilty of the texting in hiking now what I did is I kept then reach in my shoulder pocket that I had on my pack just stuck it down in there so the antenna was always pointed upward and I used my phone to send the messages and you know it went through the in reach that way I wasn't having to pull it out of my shoulder pocket and click click click and then put it back you know so it just rode with me there on my shoulder strap and that way it was also easily accessible I just always had it right there if I needed to grab it and use it I did add this little carabiner on there I personally if I'm going through a sketchy River crossing I like to be able to hook it to my person too much shirt I know some folks are like oh but you could fall down on the river and your shirt gets ripped off or whatever if my shirts ripped off and that means my packs gone too so I just I like to do that that is a personal preference but I just likes having the option of hooking it to something with a carabiner if I wanted to one of the downsides to the inReach is you do have to purchase a data plan so these can be purchased monthly you can do like a year contract so it's a little bit cheaper monthly or you can do the freedom plan where it's basically a month-to-month thing and you can cancel it whenever you choose to so I started my plan before I started my through hack and when I got done I cancelled it and there aren't any fees to cancel or anything like that the data plans range from you know fairly cheap around 12 or so dollars a month all the way up to $100 a month it just depends on what you want what your frequency is gonna be of messaging how often you want to get weather updates you know all that stuff is there on the Garmin website where you purchase the data plan so you know exactly what you're getting ahead of time me personally I wanted to be able to send unlimited messages and not have to worry about counting or being charged you know $0.50 a message when I went over those allotted messages so I went with the expedition plan some ways that I personally found the inReach helpful you might find it a little silly but you know it's the truth so I want to share it with you because who knows it could help you in these ways too so I was going into Copper Mountain ski area I knew that there were restaurants there but I didn't know what time they closed and I thought if I knew that they didn't close till 11:00 I might push to go ahead and get there tonight so I could get a warm meal and a beer so I sent my sister a message through the inReach and asked her to call find out what time they closed and let me know so I could justify not hiking to get there or whether I would just camp and get there the next morning I did get the meal in the beer by the way also I was able to arrange for a shuttle service when we were down in New Mexico and heading towards a hijita area so just out of our first stretch erin was a little sick and we got to the road and there was pretty much no traffic and the three cars that came by were not fixing a stop for us so I was able to message get a shuttle number and then text that shuttle service and tell them where we were and you know arrange for a ride when I was in the San Juans I found out about a fire closure ahead because my mom messaged me and said hey did you know that such-and-such National Forest is closed and I was like hey I'm there right now so I'm really glad that you told me so I was able to go ahead and make a plan from that point and know kind of how to detour moving forward rather than it being like a last minute thing that was just kind of dumped on me because I didn't know ahead of time and also when we were in the Gila River area and Aaron turned up missing in action we had no idea where he was the plan was to just get to the next point that we all knew we were heading to the next resupply point and hope he was there and if not call search and rescue from that point but because I had the in reach I was able to let his mom know what was going on let her make that call luckily once he got to a service area somebody was able to message me and let me know that he was in fact okay and I didn't have to wait to that point so again peace of mind and then later once aaron had an in reach because pretty much because he got lost that time we were able to communicate from in reach in reach if we weren't right together so that way i don't know you can let somebody know hey don't go over lake and pass not hacking aaron because there is a coordinates there so it's just really not a good idea and i don't know just for whatever reason you might would want to message with somebody else that was on trail whether you had service or not again these are just some of the ways that i personally used it on the CDT it was mainly for convenience because nobody was hurt or anything like that thankfully but I did have it just in case somebody that I was hiking around was injured and just knowing that I had again that peace of mind was was really nice so like with any other luxury item I'm sure you're wondering well how much does this one way it weighs 8.1 ounces and of course not long after we got on trail they came out within reach mini which weighs like 3.5 ounces so that's something that I would like to potentially have for the future but anyway I do think that this thing is absolutely worth the 8.1 ounces and like I said I will continue carrying it moving forward now if the inReach Explorer doesn't sound like you're a cup of tea you're like oh that's more than I need you know I don't need all that fancy stuff I just want to be able to send somebody a message and tell them like hey I'm okay then you might want to look into the spot device now those do take data plans they might be cheaper a month I haven't looked into the cost of those but the device itself is cheaper than an reach Explorer or se I think you can put in several pre-programmed messages and then you just hit a button and it sends to whoever you select the messages to go to and just gives them your location and lets them know like hey I'm alive now that is only one way so they can't respond to you or anything like that but at least you have peace of mind that they have peace of mind and then probably the cheapest option overall is the personal locator beacon that is just a personal locator beacon so it stays off the whole time and the only time you turn it on is when you're in trouble you just point the antenna towards the sky push the button saying I need help and that's all there is to it and there's no monthly fee or anything like that if you want to check out any of these devices more in detail I will have links to all of them in the video description and finally before I close I want to talk about responsibilities so I feel like if you're carrying the inReach or some other device where you can use SOS to call for help you need to be responsible with it so if you are going into a situation that you wouldn't go into if you didn't have this device then make sure you think twice about that because when you call somebody SOS you're in a bad situation and you are putting those people and their lives in the situation too you know like if you go dirt road riding or mud riding or something like that the general rule that I've always gone by is you get stuck in two-wheel drive and then you use four-wheel drive to get out right so you don't want to go in four-wheel drive and just get stuck and now you have no options and that is a little different but anyway all I'm saying is that don't go intentionally putting yourself into more dangerous situations just because you have a device like this for example at the end of my CDT through hack when the snow was dumping I went out there and kind of checked out how things were and I saw like this is a pretty dangerous situation and there is a safer option and continuing to trudge through the snow they will still get me the same goal which is finishing a thru-hike successfully and I could have gone back out there again knowing like oh well I've got the inReach I can always call for help but you know those people that come out there to rescue folks their moms their dads brothers sisters children of other people and you just have to think twice before putting somebody else's life in danger so anyway I'll get off my soapbox now that is my personal experience with the inReach it's something that I don't ever intend to do without again if you have any specific questions about my experience with it there are probably a lot of things that it can do that I did not use it for but anyway if you have questions about how I used it then please feel free to comment those down below in the comment section and if any of y'all have found inReach to be helpful or even other devices that you've used please feel free to share that information too so that other people can learn and thank y'all so much for watching and we'll see y'all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 157,666

Rating: 4.9307518 out of 5

Keywords: travel, hiking, backpacking, hike, gear, adventure, fun, story, Appalachian, Trail, PCT, CDT, thru-hike, Auburn, Alabama, epic, climbing, canyon, national, nature, mountains, update, park, lake, trail, tents, camping, summer, University, Aubie, River, stream, Mountains, National, Scenic

Id: V_26ZfBt1rw

Length: 20min 41sec (1241 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2018