Garrett Atkinson and a friend were hiking the Four Pass Loop near Aspen, CO separated by the trail head by over 13 miles in all directions. On the second night, Garrett spent the entire night coughing up blood and fighting his every breath. The next day he tried with all his might to walk out but continued to fall after several attempts. "I was extremely dizzy and nauseated," Garrett remembers. In that moment he knew there was no chance of making it off the trail alone and pressed the SOS button on his SPOT device.
Within two hours, hope had arrived. The helicopter landed and loaded Garrett before taking off to the Aspen Hospital where they found he had developed high-altitude sickness and pulmonary edema.
Garrett praises, "SPOT was great! They took the situation very seriously, mobilized the authorities, and kept everyone up-to-date of my status. SPOT absolutely did its job!"
"If I hadn’t had my SPOT with me, my hiking partner would have had to hike out to find help and then most likely hike back with search and rescue on foot which could have taken 16-20 hours. It really could have been a bad situation without SPOT," Garret added.
Garrett wants others to know that "if you are going to be out of cell range in an environment in which you could be at risk, SPOT is absolutely worth the relatively low price of admission."
We couldn’t agree more with Garret and are happy that he was one of the almost 4000 rescues SPOT has made.