A 60-yr old back-country skier didn't have a PLB, but did have a GPS and HAM radio to call for help and report his location. Glad he was prepared.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14444464

I wish the story had more detail. It would be interesting to know if he was using a 2 meter handheld and if contact was made over a simplex or duplex frequency. I do not always take the time to program in local repeaters when I travel and I wonder how many people actually monitor simplex call frequencies.

Aren't all hand-held HAM radios line-of-sight only?

This article has some more interesting information from the American Radio Relay League:
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2010/02/22/11353/?nc=1

"Priem asked the amateur on the other end of the radio -- Gary Gosney, K6USN-- where he was located. "He said, 'I'm in Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, Boulder County, 120 miles away." Gosney was monitoring a local Colorado Springs UHF frequency that links to the Mountain Amateur Radio Club’s (MARC) 146.82 repeater located in Woodland Park, Colorado.

"When Steve pulled out his radio and started calling for help, he wasn't sure of the frequencies that were programmed into his handheld transceiver," Ryan said. "He started flipping through the memory channels and calling MAYDAY. He told me that he was still unsure how he was communicating with a ham in Colorado Springs from Guinn Mountain. When I informed him of the MARC Woodland Park repeater, he told me that he had never heard of it, so he was perplexed as to why it was programmed in his radio."

"A quick check of the Colorado frequency database revealed two other repeaters in Colorado on that frequency -- and Steve recognized one in Grand Junction. "He told me that he used to travel to Grand Junction and had programmed that repeater into his handheld transceiver years ago," Ryan told the ARRL. "That repeater is more than 150 miles to the west and would be impossible to hit from Guinn Mountain. Coincidently, it is also the frequency of the Woodland Park repeater -- which sometimes has a CTCSS tone required for input -- but fortunately for all on this day, the tone access was turned off, allowing Steve's signal to key up the machine." The path between Woodland Park (about 9000 feet above sea level) and Guinn Mountain (about 11,500 feet above sea level) is about 75 miles. There is a lot of high terrain preventing a direct line-of-site path, so Steve's signal must have been either knife edging or bouncing off of nearby granite."

"The rescue teams coordinated via Amateur Radio, using both simplex and the mountaintop repeaters maintained by Rocky Mountain Ham Radio, the Rocky Mountain Radio League and the Colorado Connection Repeaters."

Very nice group assist on this one!

Sue

A key comment from the ARRL article: "It was very good propagation that allowed the signal to reach Woodland Park from Guinn Mountain -- and is was good luck that someone was listening."

Plus I would add that it was sheer luck that an untoned repeater was on a pair that he had programmed. If you're going to the trouble to take a ham HT with you into a remote area, why not take the time to program in the local repeaters?

That makes sense to me, not being a ham, but what do you think of my theory.

In highly mountainous country, it might be the case that the only paths to
local repeaters are straight into a mountain.

Whereas the path between you, and a distant repeater, might
be an almost straight line or skip path.

My belief is that many of the repeaters in Colorado are
located on the first real mountain in the foothills. This
allows good comm to the PLAINS, and questionable comm to
other areas. If you are behind this North/South row of
repeaters, with a mountain directly to your East, your best
chance is North or South to a distant repeater, in that row.

Please check me on my assumptions, here.

Local repeaters are set up for different purposes. Sometimes range is deliberately limited to avoid conflicts between repeaters. Some are set up to extend the range of hand held or mobile transceivers over a mountain or ridge. So it would be wise to check for the area you are going to. I cannot tell whether your assumptions are valid for Colorado but generally you made a good point.
Here in Germany we can find repeater maps in the internet (printable and some as Google Maps). I printed one on a A5 sheet and laminated it. That does not claim much space and is helpful if I forget to remember to program the frequencies or fail to reach the expected repeaters.

James asked:
Aren't all hand-held HAM radios line-of-sight only?

No. There are a few HF hand-held radios, and HF can bounce.
Hams make homebrew, kits, etc HF radios that are tiny.

An effective antenna may be larger than you prefer though.
Likewise, some use a bigger antenna for uhf/vhf in emergency
situations.

Google on ARS Adventure ham
Google on "flight of the bumble bees" ham

Some folks don't check every piece of equipment inside and out for every trip.
I haven't used my 2m HT in many, many years and haven't looked at it's programming in a lot longer so this fluke of old programming could be me (if I had the radio with me).

I'm glad it worked for him.

Mostly right but not completely. Sometimes a ham or club in a mountain valley will put up their own repeater. Estes Park has its own repeater (for instance).
There probably would be a repeater serving North Park (Walden area) and so on.

I found the Estes Park machine useful one year on a monster dayhike:
http://estes.on-line.com/rmnp/reports/HighDivide.html

Edit- I just found that Livermore, an area I've been and plan to do hiking has a listing. I'll have to see if my radio will be of any use next time I go.

Gloria and I (both hams) do a lot of back country travel. I always try to keep current repeaters and simplex frequencies in all of our radios. It is a pain and takes time and effort. However it is worth the trouble. So far we have never had to use the radios for an emergency (except for our work with the Red Cross). But many times I believe it has prevented our situation from degrading into a problem.

Last week we were granted access to the Barry Goldwater Range in southern Arizona. This is a huge restricted area used by the military for ground and air combat training. With the permission of the military we and 12 others traveled into a "cold" live fire range. The two agents from the government traveling with us had to leave and they took their "company" radios with them. None of the cell phones worked. However I was able to have excellent communications on two voice repeaters and was beaconing our location into the digital tracking system which immediately posted our location and other data on the web. We also carry a long range (HF) radio but seldom deploy it

The beacon system, called Amateur Position Reporting System or APRS, is a world wide internet connected tactical messaging and locating system. At the press of a button I could have transmitted an emergency beacon with a short text message, our location and other data. This beacon is relayed world wide and is monitored by many amateurs.

This is not a simple process. Keeping the radios programmed for our nomadic lifestyle is a real pain. Learning the APRS system is difficult and time consuming. However it is a real comfort to know that we have connection to the "outside" world when we are in such remote places.

Repeaters provide a method of extending range. They come in many flavors. A simple one just receives on one frequency and transmits what it hears on another frequency, thereby extending the users range. However many repeaters are interlinked. For instance, New Mexico has a system of 38 repeaters that are all interlinked. When a user transmits to one of them, the transmission is repeated through all 38. This provides near complete coverage from NW Texas, all of New Mexico to S Colorado. The CalZona system covers most of western Arizona and much of California. There are many such wide area interlinked repeater systems.

Some repeaters are connected directly to the internet. This allows users to enter a code, like dialing a number, and connect to similarly equipped repeaters throughout the world. I frequently use this system to talk to my friends back in Maine while I am traveling throughout the southwest.

I was a Red Cross Communications Responder during Katrina. Very shortly after the hurricane winds subsided, amateur repeaters were being placed back in service. One repeater had 18 folks working on it. For a few days, amateur radio played a major part in the communications in and around New Orleans.

It should be noted that all of this is provided free. Some repeaters are locked, requiring a specific code but no amateur can charge a fee for this service. The installation, maintenance and other costs are voluntary donations and many hams have very extensive and costly systems which provide free service to the amateur community.

Buying a ham radio and getting a license will only be the first step in the process. Being proficient in using radio is a skill like many others. It takes interest, time, money and practice. Some folks get the license and a radio then pack it away for "emergencies". Hopefully it will help, but the odds are against it.

Nomad

Unimogbert, You should PM Rantor. He knows the Livermore area better then anyone else I have ever known. I would bet that he has a map (or has access to it) of the repeater towers that are up there. Now in all fairness, that is a BIG area! Just a thought.

Yep, and as you probably know, the ARRL produces a pocket-size (3.75 x 5.25 inches) printed repeater directory. I always have one in my vehicle or in my daypack (with my HT). While they publish it every year, Amateurs want to encourage communications, so very little of the existing information changes from one year to the next.

Once a club has a repeater up, it would usually only change the frequency and/or PL/CTCSS tones if they were experiencing/causing interference or there was some other type of problem. Primarily it is additions and deletions.

Buckeye

Several other sources gives the location as Wellington - much further east, behind a ridge.

Since I'm poking around in the gulleys west of Livermore radio won't help me.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

Since I know I'm out of reach I give the SO a detailed list of waypoint coordinates showing my plans and a hike plan to read to the searchers if I'm overdue.

Hell just let me know and Rantor and I will be there in under an hour if you get into too much trouble. We have stomped those mountains since we were old enough to stomp. Maybe one of these days we can get together, have a cup of coffee and tell each other lies and have a few laughs. We are in S.E. Wyoming and have lived up and down the front range for most if not all of our lives.

By the way just picked up a RCI 2970 that I am putting in the Jeep. Maybe we will be talking to each other over a cup and not even leave our current state (and not the state of confusion that I have been accused of living in!).

PM sent.