What
Before you leave, check the weather forecast for your area of operation.
Why
You not only want to be prepared for what the weather will be for proper number of layers and water during the day, but don’t forget to look at the night time lows in case you get stuck on the mountain.
I tend to avoid very hot weather and some people aren’t crazy about high winds in freezing temperatures (not my favorite either).
You should have enough survival gear and water to keep you alive if you get hurt. Calling 911, or using an emergency locator will get a rescue started, but it could take rescue services a while to get to you. Many places in the United States depend on volunteers who may be at work. They will need to acquire their gear, assemble and put together a plan to safely get to you and bad weather could keep aircraft on the ground.. Be prepared to spend the night.
What I And Others Do
I use Weather Underground but there are tons of free apss for your phone and websites. My favorite tool is SOTAMĀT.com. It allows you to use a sms message, email, and use things like inreach to get the weather for your summit. The night before, I send the command similar to “w w6sc330 1” to get the hourly weather forecast for a summit. It returns a compact, easy to read forecast for the summit based on the summit location and elevation. You could also send the lat/long of your trailhead if appropriate.
No forecast is perfect but it does help mitigate risk. Don’t forget to have a backup plan if things don’t work out.
Visit HamNinja.com/safety for my safety article, and HamNinja.com/safetytips to see all the tips as they are published. I have more safety tips to come.
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The Ham Ninja’s SOTA Safety Tips
SOTA Safety Tips is a weekly series of quick tips to remember to improve safety of the hobby. This was inspired by the SoCal SOTA group’s meetings on this topic and will be sourced from my own and others' experience. Don’t forget, you also need to support your group and others with this knowledge. I’ll keep these as short as possible. Send feedback to safetytips@HamNinja.com.
My Experience
I am not a safety or health professional, doctor, or other expert, just an amateur. Be careful out there and do your research. I’ve activated 817+ summits since Oct of 2017 in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and several other states. Over that time I’ve hiked 2,540+ miles and climbed 626,000+ feet. I don’t have skills beyond class 3 hiking and really, “scrambouldering” and light snow pack are my upper skill limits and my hikes are normally 2 miles, NTE 18 miles. I was an Army medic and was a certified EMT. I have received training on desert survival, and recurrent first Aid training in other roles. First Aid is a perishable skill, get training..
You can contact me at safetytips@HamNinja.com.
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