SOLO HIKING

Hiking Alone Safety: How to Make Sure Someone Comes Looking

The search starts with a phone call.

Search and rescue teams are remarkably good at finding people. What they cannot do is start looking for someone nobody has reported missing. Every search begins the same way: a person at home realizes you should be back by now, and calls.

When you hike with a partner, that partner is your alarm. When you hike alone, the alarm is whoever happens to notice your silence, whenever they happen to notice it. That might be a few hours after you were due. It might be Monday morning when you do not show up at work.

The best known version of this is Aron Ralston, the climber whose story became the film 127 Hours. He went into a remote Utah canyon alone in 2003 without telling anyone where he was going. When a boulder pinned his arm, there was nobody who knew to send help to that canyon. He survived by freeing himself. Most of us would rather not have to.

Hiking alone is not reckless. It is quiet and clarifying, and for a lot of people it is the whole point. This guide is about closing that one gap: making sure that if you do not come back on time, the right people know quickly, and know where to send help.

Leave a trip plan, not a vague idea.

"Going hiking near Boulder this weekend" is not a plan anyone can act on. A search team needs specifics, and the person you leave them with will be stressed when they need them. Write it down, text it, and keep it short enough to read in one glance:

Where you are parking. The trailhead name, plus your car's make, color, and license plate. A car still sitting at a trailhead after dark is often the first clue rangers find.

Your route. The trail names, the summit or lake you are aiming for, and any side trip you might take if you feel good. A screenshot of the map with your route drawn on it is worth a paragraph.

What you look like out there. The color of your jacket and pack. It sounds trivial until a helicopter crew is scanning a hillside.

What you are carrying. Whether you have a shelter, extra layers, a water filter, a headlamp. It tells searchers whether you can safely spend a night out, which changes how they plan.

When you will be out, and when to call. These are two different times, and the second one matters most.

Set a call-out time.

Your expected return time is when you think you will be back at the car. Your call-out time is when the person at home should stop waiting and call for help. Experienced hikers and mountaineering clubs use this distinction for a reason: without it, the person at home has to decide on their own when late becomes worrying, and most people wait far too long because they do not want to overreact.

Give yourself a buffer between the two. A few hours for a day hike covers a slow descent, a wrong turn, or a long dinner on the drive home. Then make the call-out time a firm instruction, not a suggestion: "If you have not heard from me by 9 PM, call 911 and tell them I am overdue on a hike."

In the US, 911 will route an overdue hiker report to whoever handles search and rescue for that area, usually the county sheriff. In Canada, 911 reaches the police service of jurisdiction, often the RCMP, who coordinate with ground search and rescue. Your contact does not need to know any of that. They just need to know the trailhead, the route, and that you are overdue.

The hard part is not setting a call-out time. It is that the plan depends on someone remembering it, staying awake for it, and feeling confident enough to act on it.

Sign the trail register.

Many trailheads, especially in national forests and wilderness areas, have a register box or a permit station. Fill it in every time, with your route and the date you expect to be out. Rangers and search teams check these when someone is reported missing, and your entry can narrow down where to look.

But notice the order. A register helps once a search has started. Nobody reads it to decide whether to start one. It is a clue, not an alarm.

Satellite devices, and what they cannot do.

Satellite messengers and personal locator beacons have changed backcountry safety. A dedicated device can send an SOS from almost anywhere, and many let you send short texts or share your track. Some newer phones, including iPhone 14 and later and a growing number of Android phones, can reach emergency services by satellite in supported countries. If you hike alone somewhere remote, one of these is worth carrying.

They share one limitation: someone has to press the button. A fall that knocks you unconscious, a head injury, hypothermia that makes thinking slow, or a device that ends up out of reach after a slide all leave the SOS unsent. Every one of those is a situation where you need help the most.

A satellite device is how you call for help. You also want something that calls for help when you cannot.

If you do get lost: stop and stay put.

Search and rescue groups teach a simple rule called STOP: Stop, Think, Observe, Plan. The instinct when you realize you are lost is to keep moving and fix it. Usually that takes you further from where anyone will look.

If people know your route, staying near it is the fastest way to be found. Get warm, get visible, make noise with a whistle in sets of three, and save your phone battery for when you have signal. All of this works best when you know someone is already on the way, which brings us back to the call-out time.

Make your call-out time automatic.

A trip plan asks a person to watch the clock for you. A check-in app does the watching itself. It works like a dead man's switch: if you check in, nothing happens. If you do not, the people you chose hear from you automatically, at the time you set, whether or not anyone at home is paying attention.

That is how If You Read This works. Opening the app is the check-in. If you have not opened it by your deadline, the message you wrote ahead of time is texted to your contacts. It is your call-out time, without anyone having to remember it.

How to set it up for a hike:

Check in at the trailhead. The check-in needs a data or Wi-Fi connection, so open the app in the parking lot while you still have signal. That starts the clock from the moment you leave the car.

Set the interval to your call-out time, not your return time. On Pro, the interval can be anything from 1 hour to 1 month, so a 6-hour hike with a 3-hour buffer becomes a 9-hour interval. An overnight trip gets a longer one. The free plan uses a fixed 24 hours, which still means someone hears by the next day instead of whenever they notice.

Check in again when you are back at the car. Opening the app resets the clock and nothing is sent. If you forget, you get reminders by push notification and text before the deadline, and they catch up with you as soon as you have signal again.

Location goes with the message. On Pro, the alert includes where you last checked in, which for a hike is the trailhead. That is exactly where a search starts.

What to put in your hiking message.

Your message is your trip plan, delivered at the exact moment someone needs it. Write it like the person reading it is scared and needs to act in the next five minutes:

Keep a version in the app that you update before each trip. It takes a minute, and it means nobody has to piece your plans together from old texts. If you want help with the wording, our guide to writing an emergency message walks through it.

A solo hiking safety checklist.

A written trip plan with your trailhead, route, car, clothing, and gear. An expected return time and a firm call-out time, with a buffer between them. The trail register, every time. A satellite messenger or satellite-capable phone for remote trails. A whistle, a headlamp, and a layer more than you think you need. The STOP rule if you get lost. And a check-in that alerts your people automatically at your call-out time, set before you leave the trailhead.

Then go. The point of all this is not to make hiking alone feel risky. It is to make it feel the way it should: quiet, unhurried, and yours, with someone ready to come looking if it ever comes to that.

See how If You Read This works for solo hikers →

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