Keeping up with friends and family on a far-away mountain expedition has always been challenging. Some teams post dispatches every few days to their website, other climbers just use sat phones to call in. Now a new trend has emerged using a satellite transmitter to “beam” your location every few minutes enabling your location to be shown on a map. Also you can alert Search and Rescue with a touch of a button in an emergency. The SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger has emerged as the leader in this category.
There are some variations on this theme but SPOT has made it very simple – perhaps too simple. Their 2nd generation unit has just been released and is smaller, lighter with improved performance. To get everything needed – unit and tracking service – it costs over $350.00 with an annual renewal. You can read all the details on their website.
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