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There are three criteria to be balanced in my thinking on the situation of when and if to activate a call for help to a rescue service: Do you have the skills and training to extract yourself safely from the current situation? Equally important is your assessment of what other means of communications are likely to be available in the timeframe your current ...

All of your situations look like emergencies, especially if you are alone. I read an article where the National Park Service was angry at use of PLBs because someone climbed a mountain and did not want to down-climb, or they were "tired" but seemed to not have nay other condition that would negatively affect their ability to walk out of the wilderness, or ...

Looks like a bit of Googling found the answer I was after... I'm not 100% sure this is definative, but it does suggest that search and rescue is free. http://www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue/iceland-search-and-rescue/ Can anyone else confirm this?

Here is how I would evaluate it. Are there any immediate life threats? Are you unable to safely move yourself to a place where you can be rescued, faster than help would arrive with a PLB activation? Are you unable to manage or stop the life threats on your own? If the answer to those questions is yes, then I would activate the PLB. I would define "life ...

Taking each one in turn: If the trailhead is several hours away you're not feasibly going to be able to get there on your own with broken bones, and may seriously injure yourself further doing so. Several hours away normally could turn into a lot longer if you're bitten by a rattlesnake, and again by attempting the hike rather than resting you're going to ...

In my experience once a person(s) has been lost from the group first thing is to take a count of all members and ask when was the last time they saw the lost member(s). This will hopefully set a timeline of when they became lost. Then use the following searches. Retrace your steps, leave a member at where you started the search and if you have enough ...

This doesn’t really answer the question, but it’s good to know that waiting for the mountain rescue team to dig you out of an avalanche is wrong, because there’s preciously little time left. About 90 % of the people survive the first 15 minutes under the snow, but after half an hour the number sharply drops to 30–40 %. Here’s one graph (source): This ...