Originally Posted By: Pete
Several good comments there. Maybe the S&R team was just saying that they were frustrated because bad weather would not let thm go on the mountain. That would make sense.

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Are these PLB's designed so that you must manually turn ON the emergency signal? If that's the case, and you happen to be killed by a sudden accident while travelling in the wilderness, then the beacon can never activated. Hence no signal, and no body recovery.


other Pete


I think your assumption is correct - SAR was saying the presence of a tracking beacon would not make any difference in this case because they have been unable to mount a rescue from very early in the event. Knowing where a beacon is transmitting from would have no effect on the climbers until they can fly or climb to attempt a rescue.

As I said earlier, the Mountain Location Unit is unique to Mt Hood, a pretty good description of it is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Locator_Unit.