My daughter just left today for a 3-day camping trip in the mountains with her class (western Switzerland pre-Alps), her first time doing this. She was not allowed to carry her phone. Being the ever-worried dad, I insisted that she carry an Apple AirTag so that I can have a general idea of where she is, and if she gets lost, it might help track her down.
I was able to track her during her train and bus ride to the trailhead (which was in a small village), but since then (5 hours now) there has been no update. It still shows her at the trailhead. I know that the AirTags cannot actively broadcast their location and need to connect with a smartphone in close proximity. But, although she is not carrying her phone, there are several adults in the group who do have phones. I should add that the location is not very remote nor very high, and most Swiss mountains have good network coverage.
Cellular communications is line-of-sight. Even if the area the group is in has good network coverage, being down in a valley or anyplace not within a direct line to a cell tower will not get connection. If you want to maintain regular contact in remote areas you really need to equip her with something like a Garmin InReach, which is a satellite-connected radio and GPS tracker that can send and receive limited text messages anywhere that it can get overhead signal. (Not pitching for Garmin; there are other devices but this is by far the most popular.)
But I honestly wouldn’t be worried; your daughter is probably safer up in the mountains than she is crossing a busy street, and any contingency that might occur in a location “not very remote nor very high” that would require evacuation is readily supported by emergency medical and search & rescue, of which Switzerland has excellent services. The most common maladies in the backcountry are actually infected scratches, scalding their feet with hot water because people try to brace their hydrated meal pouches with open shoes, and the occasional scrape or sprain from bad footing on a trail or crossing a stream.
An Apple smartphone. Android smartphones do not by default. Even after installing a third-party app to detect an AirTag, it won’t be able to contribute to Apple’s tracking network. So if none of the chaperones have iPhones, you’ll get no updates.
And obviously, an iPhone would need connectivity to report. Backcountry, I wouldn’t necessarily count on that happening.
If you frequent the wilderness, a dedicated messenger like the Garmin is still better, but the iPhone fallback is a nice backup that doesn’t require cell network coverage.
You might want to check with the group chaperones to see if they have a supported model, and if so, whether they might be willing to provide a location update once a day or whatever?
I am not really concerned about my daughter’s safety (and Stranger is right, we have amazing emergency services in Switzerland). I was just trying to understand how these Airtags work.
I have done the Tour du Mont Blanc (circa 140 km hiking in the Alps over 8 days) several times and I had mobile coverage for 90 percent of the time. There are lots of cell towers in Switzerland, even in the high mountains. And where my daughter is going is just a few kilometers from villages. You are never far from civilisation in Switzerland.
But the point about only connecting to Apple devices in a good one. I somehow assumed that they had some sort of an agreement of reciprocity with Android. That could be the reason if the adults don’t have Apples. And the point about proximity is also a possibility. The adults are deliberately keeping some distance from the kids (this is meant to be a learning experience), so maybe the Airtag is not connecting. But not at all in 6 hours seems odd…
There should be a plastic seal that isolates the battery preventing a circuit before it is activated. The battery itself should have a shelf life of ~10 years of shelf life.
[quote=“Reply, post:9, topic:1015249, full:true”] Also, could the chaperones just be on airplane mode to save battery?
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That is certainly possible. I generally set my phone to airplane mode when hiking just so it doesn’t start roaming or spend energy searching for a network, although I tend to be overly cautious about conserving battery even though I carry a separate external battery to charge devices.
the airplane mode certainly could explain it, but then you have to wonder why the chaperones are carrying their phones at all. They gave the parents the phone number of the head chaperone to call her in case of emergency…
Camera, timepiece, music (edit: flashlight!). I also put my phone into airplane mode when camping so that it stops trying to connect like @Stranger_On_A_Train describes and the battery laaaaaasts.
For shits and giggles and provided the chaperones are Swiss, Statcounter says the mobile operating system market share in Switzerland is pretty evenly split between iOS and Android. Currently, 54% iOS vs. 44% Android.
So my daughter’s location was updated yesterday evening when she reached the campsite, and then nothing in the 10 hours after that.
So it seems pretty likely that all the adult phones are kept in flight mode except for a brief period (at the camp) when they decloaked to see if there were any urgent attempts to reach them.
I’m going slightly off topic here, but I’m not sure I agree with that policy. My wife has a heart condition and I think we should have a right to reach my daughter quickly if something should happen. At the very least, the school should have warned us that the chaperones would only be checking their phones every eight hours.
And I see the logic in using flight mode to conserve the battery, but how much juice would it use to check the phone every hour or so?
Edited to add:
It just occurred to me that there is a 44% possibility that the head chaperone who shared her number with the parents has an Android and maybe she is checking her phone often…
