Kawasaki Forums - Emergency GPS equipment.

Everyone,
On a recent ride with four friends in the forest I had a wreck. I caught a rut in between two whoops that shot me off the trail into the trees. With nowhere to go I attempted to recover and get back on the trail which I did manage to do but not before making contact with a tree. I glanced off the tree with my shoulder but unfortunately the toe of my boot caught the tree and spun my foot backwards, breaking my ankle. I had surgery last Tuesday resulting in seven screws and a titanium plate holding my ankle together, reset of four bones in my foot and reattaching ligaments.

The wreck occurred a few miles into the forest. Luckily it also happened about 300 yards from where my friends parked their trucks and off loaded that morning. They were able to load me into one of the trucks and my bike into another truck. My friend and I started out for the ER.

Here is where the problem comes into play. We were deep enough in the forest that we had no cell signal. Due to the heavy tree cover we were also unable to get gps signal on a traditional gps or our phones. We were lost in the woods, using only a dashboard compass we were able to get back to the highway but it took almost 40 mins of bouncing around on trails to do it. Not fun with a broken bone. Every bump and pothole brought on nausea inducing pain.

Here comes the question, what do you use or recommend as a resolution to the lack of data issue we encountered. I've been looking into the spot devices but they don't seem to be a total resolution to the issue. I'm looking for something that would allow our smart phones to connect and get data from the satellite network. The spot connect would have been ideal but is discontinued and I don't know if it would allow data downloads. When we were able to finally get gps signal on our phones we had no data so we couldn't download a map. The tomtom car gps never did acquire satellite signal.