This is why I carry my cell phone. I don't know, but I'd suspect that signals are not days apart on the AT.

There's also the NOAA SAME Radio forecasts. Again, I don't know about reception along the AT, but here, in the Ozarks, the coverage is pretty good. A good receiver will pick that signal up where cell coverage isn't very good.

It seems like there was time for that hiker to get a weather forecast far enough ahead of the storm to find a place to hunker down, if they had been trying. There might be places out west where you can hike for 5 days and never pick up a cell or radio signal, but once your east of the Rockies that gets pretty hard to do, if not impossible.

The storms we've had here the past few years have been vicious and you have to monitor the weather for any outdoor activity you're going to do. I've mentioned it before, but in my experience you've got no more than 72 hours between forecasts. Longer term forecast aren't that good yet, and may never be.

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A "Ping" is sort of like a tiny text message. It doesn't require the bandwidth needed to carry a voice conversation, so even a very weak comparative signal will relay a message given enough time. But you do still need a tower link to transfer the request and response both ways.

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I set up a demo of a very simple web app that tells you what your phone (or desktop web browser) thinks is your lat/long. You can try it here:

http://navigraphic.com/locate.html

This app requests and sends back to your device the same lat/long data your phone would send in response to a ping that request your lat/long. If it's not available it will tell you.

That's not to say it will work everywhere a "Ping" would work. They are different protocols and the "web" protocol sends and expects in return a lot more data that a "Ping".