An odd side story, though: I listened to a SEKI ranger present at a wilderness planning meeting. He expressed to me after the talk that he felt people could not truly experience the wilderness if they carried a SPOT or other communicator unit. IMO, that's a silly attitude, but it was real, nevertheless.
Years back, on Denali, my party of three declined to take a radio--although the park rangers encouraged it. Now a radio is not a SPOT, but that's all there was at the time. And Denali is not SEKI, but I'll wager that Denali has more objective danger--especially in late April/early May when we were there. However, we're talking about attitude: the tradeoff between risk and wilderness experience.
High on the mountain one of my friends contracted HAPE and frostbite, necessitating the need for rescue (which was successful). In my trip writeup I wrote:
"The decision to not carry a radio turned out OK. We had made this decision with our eyes wide open, acknowledging the risk for the following reasons: (1) weight and cost, of course; (2) inability to make radio contact until we got over to the West Buttress side (although there was the possibility of contacting aircraft flying overhead); (3) and the possibility of using other means of signaling aircraft, such as stamping out a message in the snow. But primarily it was the "intrusion" on the wilderness experience we and most other climbers look for: We felt the somewhat higher risk without a radio was worth the enhanced quality of the climb."FYI, I do not own a SPOT, and have refused now-and-then offers of a loan. I also do not take a GPS unit or cell phone into the wilderness. But that's me.
