We stumbled across this bit of news via Alan Arnette’s Twitter feed and had to share it, as it provides a valuable lesson for any gear and gadget enthusiast. According to the Denver Post, the mystery surrounding multiple false alarms triggered by a personal locator beacon (PLB) over the course of the last two months has been finally solved.
The alarms started in mid-December. The alarm would be set off and search and rescue teams would dispatch to the area where the alarm was triggered, but when they reached the area the unit would be turned off and were left wondering what happened. This continued to happen until just a few weeks ago when the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group finally caught up with the person behind the false alarms.
Turns out, they were accidentally triggered by a male skier in his late 20′s. The PLB was a gift from a friend who claimed it was an avalanche beacon. With the instruction from his friend to ‘be safe’ the skier turned on the beacon every time he skied, which triggered the search and rescue response. How did they find him? He forgot to turn it off and traveled to a doctor’s appointment in Boulder. When he realized his error, to say he was embarrassed was probably an understatement. Surprisingly, he is not facing charges–false alarms are costly and could lead search and rescue teams into dangerous conditions, potentially risking more lives. Luckily, no one was put in danger–just confused.
These days there is a lot of technology and equipment that we can use in our outdoor pursuits, whether it be a GPS or a PLB or an avalanche beacon. However, unless you actually know how these units work, they won’t be able to help you much when you run into problems on the trail or in the backcountry. Paul ‘Woody’ Woodward of the Alpine Rescue Team summed it up well: “There are two lessons to take from this. The first is, how do we convince people to register these things? The second is: read the directions.” (In this specific case the rescue teams were unable to contact the owner even after multiple alarms because the unit was not registered.)
Read more about the story in the Denver Post.
