Wireless Communication in the Wilderness

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Outside Magazine March 2004

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Can You Hear Me Now? (Cont.)


	(Dan Winters)

WE LAND ON HORTON lake at six in the evening and unload. The pilot lifts off, leaving us under an immense sky. The only vestiges of the wired world we departed from yesterday are Len's Palm Pilot, his handheld global-positioning-system unit, and his Globalstar satellite phone. Len's family—believing that a grown man with two young children shouldn't be going off to run a river in the grizzly-infested Arctic—told him that if he insisted on paddling the Horton, he had to bring along a sat phone, the kind that works anywhere, in case of an emergency. I really couldn't say no to the phone, even though the subtext of bringing it along was apparent: It wouldn't be used only for an emergency; Len, who also lives in Jackson Hole, was expected to stay in touch. Networker and family man that he is, he thought it a fine idea.

Compared with mountaineering trips, with their lean sense of deprivation, canoe journeys are lavish. Our 16-and-a-half-foot folding boat has a potential payload of 800 pounds, but Len and I have tried to balance our wish for comfort with easy portages and a fast-handling boat. Our entire pile of supplies and gear, plus canoe, weighs 285 pounds—including four cans of pepper spray and a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with slugs.

Now that relatively inexpensive sat phones are available, both 24/7 rescue and, if necessary, farewells are a reality for the average backcountry traveler.

On the flight up from Calgary, Len sat across the aisle from me, poring over the sat phone's thick manual. He asked me which personal telephone numbers I wanted him to program into it—in case I needed to call someone and "say some last words."

"You've read too many Everest books," I told him. "This is a moderate river, and we're going to portage the big rapids."

"What about the bears?"

"Every bear I've seen in the Arctic, and who's seen me, has run away. And if they don't, that's why we have the pepper spray and the shotgun."

"I'm not going to use the shotgun," he said. "I'd probably hit you. If there's a bear in the tent, I'm going to lie flat, and you fire over me."

This left me uneasy. "What if the bear decides to eat me?"

"I'm tastier," said Len, who's a bit heavier than me, and he went back to programming his phone.

The sat phone was impressively compact, about ten inches long with its antenna extended. This was the latest version of a device that debuted in the late 1970s, at the time the size of a large suitcase. Sat phones had shrunk to briefcase size by the early nineties, and, by 1998, to little bigger than a traditional handset. Perhaps more important, the value of these phones had been driven home during the 1996 Everest disaster, when guide Rob Hall, pinned high on the mountain, bade farewell to his pregnant wife in New Zealand. Hall had been carrying a two-way radio and was relayed by sat phone from Base Camp. The message was clear: If the situation turns dire, you can at least say goodbye. Now that relatively inexpensive (about $600) sat phones are available, both 24/7 rescue and, if necessary, farewells are a reality for the average backcountry traveler.

After trimming the boat, we cast off, Len taking his preferred spot up front, where he can enjoy the rhythm of paddling without the worry of steering. The current whisks us quickly downstream, into country so empty of human artifacts that it seems as if we're the first people on earth: tundra, sky, a distant wisp of cloud. Still, the old edginess is gone. What's diminished is that familiar mixture of genuine fear at being alone in the fastness of the high latitudes and the lovely tension of facing your fear with nothing besides what you've brought along and the wit necessity inspires.

The air-taxi service's telephone number, programmed into Len's sat phone, is no more than the push of a memory button away. Then the entire rescue services of North America would be at our disposal, down to a huge twin-rotor helicopter that can navigate through fog and find us by our GPS coordinates.

All this technology doesn't mean that we'll be less careful. Getting pinned in a rapid with your head underwater takes only a few seconds of inattention, and then all the sat phones and GPS units in the world won't do you a bit of good. Nevertheless, the phone has given us a newfound cushion and is extinguishing an awareness that's always been part of these trips, what I like to think of as slipping through the world's harshness by a mixture of skill and divine grace.

Small rapids come and go, cooling the air with their riffles. Round yellow rocks flash beneath the canoe, and in the big pools—perhaps 20 feet deep—we can see the shadowy forms of large grayling, their caudal fins waving slowly like fans. The air is sweet, the water is sweet, the vast lay of tundra inviting, its purity magnified by the knowledge that its emptiness won't come to an abrupt halt. This isn't a 300,000-acre national park or a two-million-acre wilderness area, the boundary of which we'll soon reach. No bridge crosses the Horton, no ranger station sits upon its banks, no sign will tell us when we've reached a campsite. The nearest road is a 15-day walk to the west, assuming a person could walk 20 miles a day over this terrain.

We stay in the country's embrace throughout the long afternoon, camp river left on a high bank, cook a stir-fry under our bug net, and enjoy what Ed Abbey called the "sleep of the just—the just plain tired."

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