During my last trip into the Sequoias I became enamored with the park’s ability to strip my consciousness of any and all thought, worry or concern. I found myself daydreaming about the towering granite walls and Sequoia tress so large that their gravity would seem to pull the toxins from my soul. Yes a bit majestic and grandiose; but this place became a place of healing for me and I love it.
As a former medic I’ve always enjoyed the art and science of Search and Rescue so I thought to pick up this book, “The Last Season” by Eric Blehm. It’s a story bout a seasoned Search and Rescue back country Ranger who, in 1996, went missing in the Sequoias. The Ranger, Randy Morgenson, clearly experienced the same catharses as I do; but at a level so great that he chose to spend a large portion of his life living alone in the park.
Alone in the park…
Being alone in the park isn’t something I had given any thought to until the other day when I began to plan my next trip into the park. Alone.
My wife, who has sent me off to war more than once, told me that she was worried about me being out there alone. At first I thought it silly; but having read about the demise of Mr. Morgenson I concluded that out of all of the things that are dangerous, being alone has got to be the most treacherous. Enter the Spot Gen3 and my credit card.
The Spot Gen3 is a tough little pocket sized GPS and satellite communication device that can take the alone out of being alone.
The device can track and transmit your position every 2 and a half minutes if you set it to “Extreme Tracking”, which is a bit extreme, but good to know. With a built in motion sensor the Spot device can start and stop sending updates based on your movement. A great feature for battery conservation as well as throwing out a fix on your last known position just incase you eat some poison berries and never wake up.
Of course it has an emergency button if you need to call in the local SAR team to pull your sorry but off a cliff.
It’s one of those things that seems useless until it’s damn needed; but for $165 bucks and a nominal subscription fee it falls into the “Must Haves” for the off trail, backwoods, cliff scaling types.
Shoot $165 bucks to be left alone for a few days. I’ll take it!
Check out their site and take a look at some of their adventure tracking apps as well as their tracker called the “Spot Hug”.
I think you’ll quickly notice the other tactical applications that their devices can be used for as well.
