Last week, I read a story about a man who survived five days stuck in the snowy Oregon woods by sucking down Taco Bell hot sauce packets. There was a shudder of recognition—not because I love hot sauce packets, but because I, too, have been that man.
You don't have to be a hardcore adventurer to want or need an emergency beacon—all you need is to spend time in remote areas and have a little bad luck. Many of the times that I’ve needed help while off the grid have occurred under pathetically ordinary circumstances, like driving home from a ski cabin, mushroom hunting before dinner, or walking my dogs on an abandoned logging road.
That’s why, on a recent weekend ski trip, I took the Somewear Global Hotspot in our emergency road bag. It’s an easy-to-use satellite communicator that tethers your phone to the Iridium satellite phone network. For a monthly fee, you can send texts, check the weather, and track yourself anywhere in the world. And if you find yourself trapped and scrabbling around for hot sauce packets, there’s an SOS button, too.
The Somewear started as a Kickstarter and officially launched in November of 2018. It’s a small, blue, palm-sized device that’s 4 inches long and weighs less than 4 ounces. You charge it via USB, and a light blue cap on top covers the SOS button. It has a stretchy rubber cord on the back that lets you easily attach it to the grab handle of a backpack.
The Somewear uses Iridium, the super-fast, super-expensive, and super-low-flying satellite system that has risen, Lazarus-like, to become the network of choice for premium emergency beacons. Rather than waiting for your signals to ping back and forth from space, Iridium’s satellites travel at about 483 miles above the Earth's surface. The signal is stronger, and unlike GPS networks, covers every inch of the globe—from the polar ice caps to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
My brother-in-law used Iridium phones when he was on months-long expeditions in Siberia, so it did give me a thrill to carry one myself. To use the Somewear, you start an account, download the Somewear app to your mobile device, and pair the hotspot to your phone via Bluetooth. If you’re planning on sharing your tracking information with an emergency contact, they will also need to get a Somewear account.
Somewear’s founders worked at Apple, Tesla, and Intuit (the company that makes Mint and TurboTax), which you can probably divine from looking at the app. It’s very simple and user-friendly, and you can access your account from mobile devices and your web browser.
From the app on your phone, you can send text messages just as if you were using cell service. You can also check the weather forecasts or see your location, download maps, or track yourself as you move and share your location with selected friends.
The Somewear is designed to be used outside. It’s shockproof and rated at IPX7, which means that it can be submerged in up to a meter of water for 30 minutes. It also floats! I took it out in snow and rain without a qualm.
A few considerations gave me pause. For example, when you’re tracking yourself, a pin drops on the map every 30 minutes to track your trail. That’s a long time to go between pin drops; many similar devices will let you toggle between pin-dropping every 10 or 20 minutes. In 30 minutes, you can get miles off track before you realized that something is wrong.
Thankfully, the pins were accurate, especially when I shared my tracked route with my husband. I found that texting while hiking is a great way to demonstrate just how much more fun your job is than your spouse’s! (His sarcastic replies were delayed by an hour or so.)
