Oh my goodness, for once I find myself agreeing (somewhat) with Jim. grin

If you have cell phone reception where you are going to be hiking, a simple text message once a day will suffice. That's how my wife and I work it. I leave the phone off until I need to send the message and thus save battery. Phone stays close to my body (in cold weather) to maintain batter life. Sometimes though, I don't have cell reception here in deep, east Texas. In that case, I typically try to be heading home by 2pm on Sunday (for a weekend trip) and if necessary will stop and use a land line (ie pay phone - yes they still exist in small towns here. smile ) or I usually get cell reception around a small town (AT&T).

I ALWAYS leave a map and route and contact numbers of Forest Service and Sheriff departments in the area I will be hiking.

If you don't have cell reception, then I'm not sure that a SPOT would be any better.

Tango
_________________________
If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't. Either way, you're right.