ou should have a satellite communicator. Right next to a first aid kit, the ability to summon emergency help is the most important piece of gear you can have with you. Forget fancy tents and super-sticky boots. Don't worry about which tires best let you drive up cliff faces. None of that matters if you get hurt and need to call in the helicopters.
Until this week, when you scrambled for your Garmin inReach or Spot or whatever and desperately jabbed the SOS button, most of the time the company that saved your bacon was a somewhat-obscure company named GEOS Worldwide. Through their impressively named International Emergency Response Coordination Center (IERCC for ease of memory), they dispatched help around the globe, helping save over 12,000 people in 198 countries so far.
Well, that response will now come from Garmin, since they acquired GEOS this week for an undisclosed pile of cash and/or stock. We at Adventure Monkey approve of this acquisition because tighter integration between the service and Garmin's devices could yield some really interesting product features in the future.
For those of you with Garmin inReach-enabled devices, this can only be good news, even if it just means the sign-up process is streamlined (because, ugh, it's confusing). For those of you owning Garmin stock, it's evidence of their deepening commitment to outdoor adventures, which is a growing, lucrative market (according to us at Adventure Monkey), so great news for future financial results. And for those of you with Spots or other non-Garmins that use GEOS, they'll definitely honor existing subscriptions but you may want to take a look at inReach when you next replace your device.
More from
News
category
