All true, but my point is that both getting word out that you need help or finding someone in that terrain is a major undertaking. Standing in the middle of Lake Basin on a search where you have no idea where the person is is overwhelming. It's truly a needle in a haystack and monumentally depressing. We are incredibly lucky to find anyone out there.I guess this is where I still disagree (with regard to experienced hikers). The High Sierra is a very small region - it's probably one of the smallest ranges in N America. If you're on trail, you will see people - all day long. During peak season, there are multiple ranger stations manned along the PCT/JMT. The whoop-whoop-whoop of a helicopter is a familiar sound to anyone who spends time hiking around.
It does help that the Sierra is kinda sorta crowded, but the search effort then has to look up all the permits, find their phone numbers and call each person. This was done on the search for Larry as well as all major SARs. Interviewing is an art and a discipline in itself. But it takes a long time.
Another story? Sure Uncle George, tell us another one!! Well, OK. A few years back, a woman took a bad fall in a really isolated area. She was there for a couple of days before, by almost a miracle, some hikers heard her call for help and she was rescued. She wrote a book about it and I went to see a talk she gave. I asked her how she thought she might have been rescued had the hikers not heard her. She seemed pretty confident that once she didn't come out as expected, a search would have traced her route easily (she left no specific itinerary) because she was "a lone female hiker and people would have remembered her."
Nope. Not even close. There's a fair chance I talked to her on the JMT, but had no memory of her at all. Except by another miracle on the part of SAR, she would have been long dead by the time we would have gotten to interviewing people.
We can -- and are -- getting really loopy on this issue. But the point I want to keep coming back to is the cascade of decisions that should be made when deciding whether to bring a gizmo or not. They work to narrow the search; they work to call immediate help when you're injured; they work to allow you to call for help should you come across someone else injured (this is becoming quite common -- maybe almost half of the emergency calls now).
So, use one or don't. But the rationalizations made in the process should truly reflect the reality of their effectiveness and the risk to all involved of that choice.
g.
I don't know what the answer is, I guess like Daisy and others I'm starting to reconsider. But I'll tell you one thing - there should be serious consequences for people who abuse this technology. Every time I read about someone who called in a rescue because they were too tired to hike out or some other similar story I just want to track them down and slap them silly. 
