Last year I had some hope for these gizmos, but this year (in Sequoia Kings anyway) they were definitely a pain and yanked rangers onto wild goose chases (including 2 instances of trying to find lost ones that were beeping out their pathetic little "Find me" signal.
Yuppie 911 is good, but I started calling it the "mommy button" when that PCT hiker started hitting hers last spring in a bad thunder/snow/slush storm.
I didn't know about the insurance. It should probably be mandatory with the sale and the agency reimbursed for any questionable calls. Proving a bogus one is really hard. I don't know of any that have ever happened.
That said, I also want to say that in a bunch of years doing SAR, I can think of only a very few bogus calls. Most people are really in trouble or reasonably believe themselves to be in trouble. One of the advantages of these gizmos is that they do allow a ranger to get to the person and make that determination (unless, of course, like the woman at Colby pass, who kept hitting her button but also kept moving. The rangers responding never caught up to her though they hiked about 20 miles from their station. Grrrrrrr!
George Durkee
