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Be careful riding alone!

That reminds me, the Garmin Edge 820 will beep at you when you leave phone coverage, so you know.

It was beeping like crazy on the dirt roads in Arkansas.
 
It was beeping like crazy on the dirt roads in Arkansas.

And there are a LOT of places up there where you can leave the road and no one driving by will EVER notice...

I suspect that SAR can access cell tower info. So they would at least know which towers your phone last connected to, assuming you don't turn it off to save the battery. On that last Arkansas trip I did in October with Daniel, I forgot to put my phone in Airplane mode, so it was constantly searching for towers. It was fully charged when we left that morning and dead by 5:00pm.
 
So they would at least know which towers your phone last connected to, assuming you don't turn it off to save the battery.
The Garmin app would lead a trail to the last place on the map that you were connected. Better starting point than none, I guess.
 
The Garmin app would lead a trail to the last place on the map that you were connected. Better starting point than none, I guess.

It takes more than one tower to calculate your position if no GPS is involved. So at best, once you reach the edge of coverage for the last tower before you lose ALL signal, they could only narrow it down to which coverage zone you are in, but not where in the zone you might be.

If you ride in places like Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, etc,... there are LARGE areas with no coverage once you leave the paved highways. There really is no better option than SPOT, InReach, or a PLB of some kind.
 
Clearly, but I don't ride there. I typically ride where there is phone coverage or with someone else.

If that changes, I'll get something that makes sense for that scenario.
 
And there are a LOT of places up there where you can leave the road and no one driving by will EVER notice...

I suspect that SAR can access cell tower info. So they would at least know which towers your phone last connected to, assuming you don't turn it off to save the battery. On that last Arkansas trip I did in October with Daniel, I forgot to put my phone in Airplane mode, so it was constantly searching for towers. It was fully charged when we left that morning and dead by 5:00pm.
I did the same hiking at Enchanted Rock this fall with my sister, phone was tapped out of battery in a few hours.

The Garmin app would lead a trail to the last place on the map that you were connected. Better starting point than none, I guess.
It is better than none (but it is a difficult starting point), being one initiates that search and keeps a running tab for when you're back in service. I won't lie and I certainly don't hope harm on people, but I enjoy a good search, and I've had no better feeling than when we get "Found them".
 
This poor guy probably had better cell coverage than we do sitting in our homes. He was only, at most a few miles off the Interstate and below the mountain where they put many of the cell towers. I use to use my Android cell phone with Spotwalla before I had my Spot. You use an application called Bubbler GPS. Your phone registers its location using its built in GPS system (not the cellular system) then sends a ping with it's location information to Spotwalla for mapping (this does require cellular data connection). It looks exactly like doing it with a Spot Device. The only two drawbacks is that it does require a cell connection and it will use up the battery quicker in the phone (although not that much faster).

If I had a cell phone, I would try to set it up to see how hard it was. :( And as I think about it, if I had set it up, I wouldn't be missing my cell phone now.
 
Remember when we tried to be outraged when we found out "big corporations" were tracking us. :trust:

I believe, and someone should confirm, that Google maps allows tracking for a defined amount of time and reports your position via web or email notifications.
 
So where is that? Where you lost or do you have all those roads memorized? Nevermind... I watched most of that. It was a good example of the kind of riding I would never do alone. High risk of of something going wrong with all the snow and being out where no one would find you for a long time... Still. It did look fun.
Yes, it was getting late and I was low on gas. The real problem came when I went down a steep north facing hill and there was no way back up. This was in Rio Puerco (west of Rio Rancho) New Mexico. I spent many days riding alone but this was the scariest. Have a great one and be careful.
 
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