Satellite Phone in the Sierra?

[fishmonger]

renting makes no sense, unless you want to buy a new phone. why? > we are hiking the Muir trail yo-yo, which is more than 30 days - 2 months of rental is well over $750 without the minutes. I can buy a 9505a for $500 any day on ebay and possibly sell it in fall for $400.

re position - we have a Garmin 60csx with us, highly reliable. If a call gets dropped, I guess I can call again in most situations, unless I am about to die in between satellites, which is when the Spot wont help me much either.

[oldranger]

Ok, I knew Iridium was more expensive but not that much.

Main concern about dropped calls isn't about the person in the field but the person on the other end. I several search and rescue personel once were called out on a winter rescue after a persons call was dropped. And the receiver thought the person making the call was in trouble. We received permission from the forest service to use snowmobiles in the wilderness but got about 100 yards into the wilderness when due to steep terrain and dense forest we had to start skiing. Luckily the person who made the call arrived at Mt. Bachelor's Nordic center and two Nordic patrollers figured out he was the person we were looking for! The call was to say he was coming home early because the weather was real nasty. As it was we were lucky that the deputy sheriff on the search team was able to hear his radio. We were really close to going on a nasty 8 mile ski.

Mike