Signal

You can’t be found if you can’t be seen or heard.

Everyone has been lost; while most of the time it’s uneventful, in the wilderness it will not be. Under the shroud of obstructed terrain, limited contact, and exposure to the elements, the more time that passes, the harder it becomes to be found. Every year, thousands of people on U.S. federal lands need search-and-rescue, and in just one decade (2004–2014), national parks alone logged 46,609 SAR cases—almost half of them ordinary day hikers who never planned to spend the night out. When you’re reported overdue, rescuers start where you were last spotted. However, if you kept walking for hours before admitting you were lost, or wandered off-trail without seeing anyone, you may be miles outside that first search box. From the air and from other hikers, a person tucked under trees or around broken rock is shockingly hard to spot—so teams can pass within a few hundred feet and never notice you. Your voice usually won’t carry more than a short distance, and you can’t shout for hours. You need another way to reach others and let them know you are in distress; a signal that carries farther than you do.¹²

At Jackpack Gear, every kit starts with the UST Hear-Me-Now whistle and the UST Micro Signal Mirror. The Hear-Me-Now is a flat, pea-less water-rescue whistle, so there’s no moving ball to swell or jam, and its high-pitched tone carries far better than a human shout in wind, surf, or tree cover—your voice is usually lost within a few dozen yards. In practical tests and user reports, this 120 dB flat rescue whistle, combined with its distinct pitch, has been heard about ½ mile away in thick timber and up to 2 miles away on open water. It comes on a breakaway neck cord so you can wear it all the time and still reach it if you’re cold, injured, or lying down.³⁴

UST Hear-Me whistle blown in three sharp blasts.

The UST Micro Signal Mirror is smaller than a credit card, built as a true heliograph: in daylight it can throw a tight flash of sunlight that’s visible to aircraft and distant boats or ground teams many miles away, without batteries or electronics—as long as you have sun, it works. A properly aimed signal mirror flash can be picked up from aircraft at up to about 40 miles on a clear day. ⁴⁵

The Expedition kit handles night signaling with one simple combo: paracord and a 6-inch green Cyalume ChemLight, the same chemical light used by U.S. forces. Each ChemLight has a molded hole below the hook that fits paracord perfectly—run the cord through, crack the stick, and you get a bright 360° glow for hours that still works when wet and doesn’t touch your battery reserve. Swing it in a steady circle and it becomes a clear moving beacon instead of just another point of light. Paired with the whistle, it gives rescuers what they can actually home in on in the dark: a hard, directional sound and a repeating ring of light they can close in on.⁴⁶

Cyalume chem light on paracord, swung in a circle as a high-visibility beacon.

Your signal plan also starts before you ever get lost: everyone, especially kids, carries a whistle. Any repeated group of three is internationally recognized as a distress signal. The deal is simple: if you can’t see your group and calling doesn’t fix it, you stop, blow three times and stay put. The responder follows with two blasts to let you know you’ve been heard. Don’t “just check one more ridge” or follow game trails—search teams find people who sit still, not people who keep moving. Once you’re off-route, your job is to be obvious: lights and mirrors ready to flash in groups of three, high-visibility gear and clothing where it can be seen, and if you’re stuck for a while, lay out an X or triangle with rocks, branches, or gear where it’s visible from the air. There’s no substitute for a simple, practiced plan when things go wrong. ¹²⁷⁸

References

  1. Heggie TW, Amundson ME. Dead men walking: Search and rescue in US national parks. Wilderness Environ Med. 2009;20(3):244-249.
  2. National Park Service. Search and Rescue Annual Report 2014. U.S. Department of the Interior, 2015.
  3. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FEMA. Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness. 2021.
  4. Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, 9th Edition. The Mountaineers; 2017.
  5. U.S. Air Force Survival Manual: AF Regulation 64-4. Department of the Air Force, 2019.
  6. Cyalume Technologies. ChemLight Product Data Sheet. 2023.
  7. Forgey WW. Wilderness Medicine, 7th Edition. Rowman & Littlefield; 2021.
  8. Auerbach PS, Cushing TA, Harris NS, eds. Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine, 7th Edition. Elsevier; 2017.