11 Sep 2024
With better outdoor skills, accurate trail information, good trek planning, improved fitness and reliable trek buddies — the chances of an outdoor safety incident can be significantly reduced.
But despite that, there is always a risk when we go outdoors.
There are variables that are out of our control.
Running out of battery and losing the trail
Running into bad weather when we didn’t expect it
Getting injured by a stupid stone you thought is good enough to step on
And so on.
Things can and do go wrong sometimes.
And it can happen to anyone — including you — irrespective of your experience, knowledge, fitness, or group size.
Nature doesn’t differentiate.
So when things do go south and you need rescuing — the one key factor that plays a major role between life and death is TIME
Close your eyes, imagine you are in trouble and ask yourself this:
How long would it take before someone realized I was in trouble if I couldn’t call for help?
We ran an experiment few months back.
We asked hikers to let us know whenever they headed out on a hike (whether solo or in group)
We would personally check in with them if they are back safely at the time they said they would be back.
Checking in with them gave them a sense of security
That someone is there looking out for them
And that if something was to go wrong, they’ll send help.
One of things we really want to stress on in this community is outdoor safety.
And when I say “stress on”, I mean we want to build solutions that help you, not just give lip service.
So we took the results of that experiment and built something.
(After all, there is only so many check ins we can do personally)
Introducing : Alerts 🚨
A stupidly simple app that alerts your emergency contacts about a potential emergency situation if you don’t come back when you said you would.
It’s the last line of emergency communication if you lose network connectivity on the trail and don’t have a satellite communication device to call for help.
It’s a webapp. Works in browser like a website. No installation or download required.
This is just version one (v1). It’s simple and does one thing, but more features like one-click SOS, sending last known location, etc will be added in the next versions.
But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.
We want to build this together with you.
So please share your feedback, feature suggestions & bug reports here or over DM.
👉 Here’s the link : (redacted)
Simply create a new Alert whenever you head outdoors. Whether solo or in group. Whether it’s a dayhike or a longer trek.
It is one of those things you might take casually and forget to do, but can actually save your life one day (I hope that day never comes for you)
Important:
- Don’t rely 100% on this tool. Like any software tool, this might break sometimes and we’ll keep improving it.
- This tool is ONLY for community members (for now). Please do not share it outside. We want to make it reliable enough before sharing it with the world, for free.
- The alert & check-in messages are sent on WhatsApp (account name : Rush Labs Alerts).
- Manav & Shubrank