Hmm. The early parts of the article (and the headline) says "calls", but further down it says "calls, texts and voicemail".
Surely if you get a text saying "Hi, it's mountain rescue, you haven't reappeared, wassup?" you'd take that seriously?
Surely if you get a text saying "Hi, it's mountain rescue, you haven't reappeared, wassup?" you'd take that seriously?
I could see myself ending up in the same situation as the subject of this story if I were out hiking and I got slightly off course, but I weren't in fear of being truly lost, and if meanwhile the rangers were trying to call me from a number I didn't recognize.
One possible solution: For areas requiring permits to hike, make adding the park's phone number to your contacts a requirement to hike in the park. The reality of the spammy telephone system in the United States is that expecting people to notice calls from unexpected numbers is unreasonable.
(Or just require everyone to carry satellite locators in parks. I don't think we're too far off from that being economically feasible.)
So yes, I do.
I use it as a satnav sometimes but I try to rely on my sense of direction unless I'm really stuck. It helps build situational awareness and enjoyment of the environment. Phones are not that reliable in such areas anyway and I carry a Garmin InReach satellite communicator for emergencies.
Also, not sure where this happened but here in Europe nobody uses texts anymore. The only ones I get are spam. Everyone uses WhatsApp or similar services. I have about 30 unread texts on my phone right now and they're all spam. I have notifications for them turned off :)
Edit: ah I see it's in the US. I heard texts are more common there still because of iMessage being used a lot and falling back to SMS.
Depends on country. Here in Poland, SMS is still widely used, though WhatsApp is gaining popularity at an annoyingly high rate. I still get some real messages, but >80% of texts I get are delivery notifications, appointment reminders and 2FA codes.
Well that's one way to avoid the ecological fallacy!