Communicating in the Outdoors

My following thoughts on how to keep in touch when doing outdoor sports are taken from a post I made in a mountain biking forum. Because it discusses saftey and emergency communication, it's worth sharing more widely.

I am not an expert and the opinions expressed in this article are based solely on my personal experiences. Please do additional research to understand what will address your outdoor safety needs best.

General outdoor safety

The tenets of outdoor safety apply equally to mountain biking as they do to any other sport: a good resource for these is the WTA’s Safety Essentials: A Toolkit for Hikers.

First, a little about me: I was previously volunteer Search and Rescue in the I-90 corridor (KCESAR, KCSARA; I since moved out of WA), I am HAM radio certified, and I myself venture out of cell coverage time to time. That said, I am not an expert in telecom, radio, or satellite, and you should always do your own research from reliable sources and be comfortable using the tools you rely on before you need them.

From a safety perspective, the most important thing is to communicate your plans to someone before leaving. It only takes a minute to a text to a family, friend, or colleague saying where you are going and when you plan to be back. You are also recommended to leave info on your car, gear, and medical conditions. And don’t forget to let them know once you’re back safely before taking a long stop for coffee, food, or shopping.

It’s not fun to think about, but no form of communication should be your final backstop in an emergency, as you may be injured, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to use such communication.

That said, hopefully you will never be in such a situation. The rest are my personal opinions on how to stay connected with people when outdoors, in increasing levels of communication frequency and decreasing levels of coverage.

Satellite

If you often spend time in areas out of cell coverage, it can be a good idea to consider getting a satellite communicator. This will allow you to send messages and get help pretty much anywhere. The price of these devices have come down in recent years due to competition, but be aware there is usually also a fairly steep monthly service fee.

Personally, I don’t think satellite communicators are as beneficial for mountain biking as backpacking or mountain climbing. I’ve considered it but I don’t have one, though I know several people that do (they haven’t used theirs).

For emergency communication, the satellite on iPhone 14+ may fall into this category, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone that actually used it. As always, know how this iPhone feature works before relying on it—Connect to a satellite with your iPhone. You’re even able to test it without calling emergency services.

Radio

To me, 2-way radio remains the best sweet-spot between reliable communication anywhere and cost. There’s a lot of different kinds of radios and bands, though, so some research is needed to know what will fit your needs best. If you’re just looking to tell your trail buddies you’re taking a turn, a decent run-of-the-mill FRS or GMRS radio can work perfectly fine. These will get far less range than they’re quoted for, but they tend to still be good for about a mile, which in my experience is far longer than my group is spread.

If you need something more reliable for long-range communication and spend a good amount of time outdoors, I highly recommend getting HAM radio certified and picking up a handheld or portable (vehicular) radio. A handheld will get a fraction of the range of a portable radio, but if you’re able to hit a repeater, you can reach pretty much anywhere in the greater Seattle area, as Miguel’s image shows. If you’re not, the range on portable HAM radios is still much longer than FRS/GMRS, so you should have no trouble reaching your group as long as you’re not an unreasonable distance apart. Using a radio will require more consideration of the radios’ relative positions, orientation, power, and range to ensure communication, but these are things you’d learn when getting the amateur FCC license. The price on such radios is also fairly approachable for entry-level devices, though money will generally buy you reliability here.

Note that if you go with HAM radios, anyone broadcasting on a radio will need to have an FCC license, so you’ll have to convince people you ride with to spend the time to get their license too. In an emergency situation, you are able to use any band to get help, whether you have a license or not (I am not a lawyer and definitely not your lawyer).

Cell

Cell coverage in the outdoors can be unreliable. However, it’s the easiest and fastest when you have it. If you do need coverage, my general rule of thumb is to get on a hill, out of trees, and near a highway.

The following is specific to the I-90 area west of Seattle, as that was the topic of the forum thread:

As for specific carriers, pretty much everyone I knew from SAR that cared about coverage got Verizon. These are people that frequented Tiger Mtn, Fall City, and North Bend. My information here is now about 6 years old, but looking at the FCC’s 4G LTE Coverage map from 2021, it looks like the data aligns with Verizon being the best option. This is accentuated as you go further East into I-90.

As the maps show, AT&T may give you voice coverage over all of Tiger, but not data. Verizon appears to have LTE data across. This may not be representative of what you will get on a 5G phone, though. I was unable to find any unified information on 5G coverage, but I would assume it’s spottier than this, given the range and foliage penetration of the UHF bands.