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Your chances of dying on a hike in the mountains are about 1 in 15,700. If you start doing technical climbs you’re up to 1 in 1,750. Statistically, at least, you’re safer skydiving (1 in 101,083) or scuba diving (1 in 34,400) than setting foot in the woods. In fact, you’re about 67 times more likely to die on a hike in the mountains than you are while skiing.
Ok, so you were probably going to die someday anyway, and nobody’s saying you shouldn’t head out for a hike. But given the danger, some precaution is in order — especially if you’re brave enough to head out alone.
Enter CauseLabs, a local development company that saw an opportunity to reduce these risks with the use of your smartphone.
“The whole purpose of this app is to save time,” Russell Stewart a developer at CauseLabs said. “The first 24 to 48 hours are the most crucial, and any bit of information that search and rescue teams can have available to them can save a person’s life. We want to make it easier for them to get that information.”
The SOLO app works by keeping tireless watch over you while you hike. Before heading into the wilderness you tell the app where you plan on hiking and when you plan on returning. You then tell it the contact information of somebody you trust, and that information is sent up to the app’s servers. Once you tell the app you’re leaving, all that information is saved in the company’s servers, allowing the service to work while you’re out of cellular range.
Once — or I suppose if — you safely finish your hike you tell the app that you’re safe and it’ll inform your contact not to worry. If, however, you don’t come back as expected, the app will send out an alert that you’ve gone missing.
Right now the app only works on Android devices, but Stewart said he was interested in bringing it to iOS in the not too distant future.
Ok, so the app isn’t going to protect you from mountain lions or from falling off the side of a cliff. However, having someone know that you’ve gone missing can save precious time, and that might mean the difference between life and death.
And as for hiking, don’t worry too much. Your chances of dying in a car accident are 1 in 6,700.
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