Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

Why InReach over Spot? Im rsearcing both and havnt decided which ia best yet.

 

Think around 30%

 

There is a jet over at Nellis now that has the red stars, but you're right, the Navy/USMC aggressors use it more often.

 

I was pretty amazed with having cell reception in places I'd never had it before. It wasn't perfect but I could update people and get current weather.

In northwest DV I'm not worried about coyotes. In the Inyos I'm concerned with mountain lions. They are up there. Not in great numbers but I don't want to be a food item.

 

Can old gpx files be transferred to the Garmin In-reach?

 

You had a low pass while you were at the Racetrack? I'd be pissed at myself for missing something like that. They don't go there often since it is a popular tourist location.

 

Saline and Panamint Valleys are your best bet. Sometimes Eureka too.

 

Leaving the top of the food chain is not comfortable.

 

Exactly, cats are friggin scary. Basically a land shark.

 

If your ever in the wilderness and you think some predator is in the area and/or might be stalking you pick up a big rock and slam into another big rock. The sound that makes will make any animal think twice about approaching you. Or a BIG stick / log = same.

 

Kids are a giant pain in the butt when it comes to attention span and natural curiosity. It's part of being a kid really. I know of no easy way to change that either. Not sure a hollow point is the answer-too easy to miss. Snake shot seems like a better answer.

 

I can't imagine any scenario in which discharging a firearm anywhere in the vicinity of a child near a snake is going to reduce the likelihood of a rather negative outcome. Honestly if anyone is thinking that is a sensible thing to do leave the gun at home.

 

Aside from everything else, we’re talking about Death Valley here and discharging firearms is almost certainly illegal in the National Park. I have kids too ...

 

No offsense, but a little thought about the worst case outcomes of being bitten by a rattlesnake vs. accidentally shot would go a long way to keeping more safe than your current plan.

(Hint: Kids bitten by rattlesnakes rarely if ever die, bullets are far less forgiving. Kids can bleed out very fast from bullet/shrapnel wounds in the wrong place while you can wait four hours for anti-venom in most cases. Of the 7000-8000 venemous snake bites per year in the US about 5 are fatal).

Anyway, your kid so I won't comment further.

 

THAT was funny!

 

I laughed pretty hard too!

My take is that sakes are part of nature and are therefore good.

Snakes on a plane though, watch out!

 

Don't forget that DV is in California and so those are the laws that govern any firearm within the park.

While fatal rattlesnake bites are extremely rare they are extremely painful and hard to treat. As well as expensive. I've seen a copy of a hospital bill and I think it had about $125,000 worth of antivenom treatments. For most adults it's actually pretty hard to get bitten and I'm pretty sure that alcohol is involved in a high percentage of bites. It's a little easier for kids to be careless but it's not that hard to clear around your camp etc.

With my 5 year old son and I have caught enough non-venomous snakes so that he understands that only Dad touches snakes. He knows to treat snakes and guns the same way. He doesn't touch them.

 

InReach is a more expensive unit (~$400) and its base plan is about the same cost as Spot. InReach allows for two-way messaging which offers fairly obvious advantages over the Spot as far as coordinating with people either in an emergency or just when checking in.

Spot is a less expensive unit (~$150) but is one-way only. For check in messages this means you have no acknowledgement that a message was sent and so it is wise to send more than one per day if you have someone who is suppose to keep track of you.

Both Spot and InReach depend on a GPS fix to give rescuers your location. That should rarely be a problem, but might be an issue in the classic "pinned in a slot canyon" situation. With InReach you could of course describe your location via the message though you might have poor Iridium connectivity in the same slot canyon .

An actual PLB (like the ACR ResQLink) is priced in between (~$270) and requires no monthly fee or plan. It can only be used in an emergency and has no messaging features at all. If it has a GPS fix it will send it in its message giving rescuers an exact location. However, even without a GPS fix the system is designed to give a good location just on the raw beacon signal. This will get rescuers to within less than a mile of you at which point they can home in on the beacon signal itself. The PLB will get you rescued from anything other than a cave - a message will get out of a slot canyon, they will get a position fix of you in a slot canyon, and they will be able to home in on the beacon when in a slot canyon.

So you can see there is no "perfect" solution but any of the above is of course much better than hoping on having cell signal!

I carry a Spot and a PLB. I've had the Spot a long time before the InReach was a real option. If I was buying new or was going to replace the Spot I'm not 100% sure which I'd go for but I think I'd probably try the InReach. The first Spots were trash but everything since Gen 2 has been quite reliable. I believe InReach has suffered on occasion from buggy software updates but from what I can tell that mostly effects things other than the messaging features.

A smartphone is so vastly more useful than the dorky Garmin apps, crappy maps and puny display. I wish they would just sell the Iridium messaging portion of things at a reasonable price along with their basic plan.

 

Not to flog a dead snake, but it is indeed legal to possess a firearm in DV, but illegal to discharge for ANY reason: https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/management/lawsandpolicies.htm

 

But did say “discharge if you feel life is in danger”. Which contradicts “illegal for any reason” part.