1 dead 1 injured / Aug 10 2019, Pingora, Cirque of the Towers, Wind Rivers, WY

Thank you Jameson for responding at the scene as well as offering us all details and lessons learned. Thank you all for offering education on sat phones, beacons, and general preparedness.

Much respect for the ERS & SAR teams. 

If you are outside of the USA in remote regions wouldn’t it be wise to have a Global Rescue policy and text them with your inReach as well as hit the SOS? Global Rescue specializes in coordinating local rescue resources both private and public. 

Matthew Wells wrote: If you are outside of the USA in remote regions wouldn’t it be wise to have a Global Rescue policy and text them with your inReach as well as hit the SOS? Global Rescue specializes in coordinating local rescue resources both private and public. 

You can do that through GEOS, offered through the inReach subscription.  You can get international rescue (SAR) insurance, as well as re-patriation insurance (which gets you back home to the hospital of your choice).  I've only signed up for the GEOS for North America.  While in Africa I had a separate travel insurance policy which covered everything, and GEOS wasn't needed (though I had the inReach with me).

Matthew Wells wrote: If you are outside of the USA in remote regions wouldn’t it be wise to have a Global Rescue policy and text them with your inReach as well as hit the SOS? Global Rescue specializes in coordinating local rescue resources both private and public. 

We had a basic Global Rescue policy as part of being AAC members (their "Trailhead Rescue" policy). I notified the Global Rescue Hotline via text** during the rescue. To my knowledge, they did not assist in "coordinating" local rescue services in any way. They told me the inReach SOS service (GEOS?) would take the lead. After that I had no further contact with Global Rescue during the emergency. I don't know if the situation would have been different if we had a different policy. 

**My memory was wrong. Grant makes the important point below that as of Feb 2019, the Global Rescue Hotline was not setup to receive text messages. If you have an inReach you can contact them via email (operations@globalrescue.com ).

Jack Cramer wrote:

We had a basic Global Rescue policy as part of being AAC members (their "Trailhead Rescue" policy). I notified the Global Rescue Hotline via text during the rescue. To my knowledge, they did not assist in "coordinating" local rescue services in any way. They told me the inReach SOS service (GEOS?) would take the lead. After that I had no further contact with Global Rescue during the emergency. I don't know if the situation would have been different if we had a different policy. 

Interesting... they were criticized a lot this season for how they handled rescues in Nepal. 

off of the original topic but useful info, I'm one of the people in the US Jack was texting, I got a text from him looking for the local rescue team's number and email, I got it back to him within probably 10 minutes, about 45 minutes later I got a call from GEOS looking for the local  rescue team's contact...turns out they had got the info on people to call from Jack in the field before they could find it themselves and they wanted me to confirm, which was interesting because he had got the info from me to start with (I think) in any case they apparently got it figured out eventually, but having your stateside contact ready with contact info for the appropriate rescue team  would be useful, as well as having them somewhat up to date on what you are doing,...
I also got to interface with Global rescue quite a bit trying to get them in contact with Jack, in fairness I have only that interaction to go off of but I was surprised how tough they were to get in touch with on an inreach, definitely have their email, not phone, and expect a wait to get a response...

also FWIW this seems to only be an out of the US issue, I'm on a local SAR team and our interactions with GEOS have always been really good, we get a fair amount of calls through them and it seems to be timely and directed to the correct responders most of the time...

Jack Cramer wrote:
I ask because I used the SOS feature on an inReach for a rescue this year on Cerro Torre (Argentina). During this rescue the Garmin SOS service continually relayed inaccurate information that complicated and endangered the rescue ...

 These services, in my my view, simply aren't setup for high-angle rescues in truly remote locations. You can avoid some of the issues we had by obtaining the contact info for the local SAR team or helicopter services before you head into the mountains.

Part of the challenge there, at least as of my last trips to Chalten, is that there is no team prepared to accomplish high-angle technical rescue in the Fitz Roy massif.  Rescue there is a collaborative effort between the Park, local climbers, and visiting alpinists.  I imagine the same is true in many of the more remote places in the world.

In Rocky Mountain National Park (my stomping grounds) the Inreach is a great way to contact emergency responders.  I've been on both ends of the device many times, and it is definitely my preference in terms of emergency communications (over sat phones even).  VHF is great when you know frequencies and have line of sight communications or repeaters available, which isn't always the case.