Jason Cipriani/TheStreet
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As someone who lives in Colorado, I have a love/hate relationship with the winter. Between late October and the end of March, the lack of outdoor activities is something that can make one go a little stir crazy. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to do something about the cabin fever I’d been feeling.
Even though we’d recently had a few spring snowstorms, a friend of mine and I figured a local hiking trail would be clear and ready for us to make the two-mile out and back hike. Plus, I had a Garmin inReach Mini, a compact GPS comms tool that is basically a walkie talkie on steroids, sitting on my desk for a while that I’ve been waiting to test.
As I drove us closer to the parking lot where our hike began, I noticed the amount of snow still on the mountain and roads. Nearing 9,000 feet in elevation, it started to dawn on me that our prediction of the snow melting off was utterly wrong.
Instead, as I put my blinker on to turn onto the final half-mile dirt road to the trail’s start, we were met with an unplowed road and it was clear my Tesla Model 3 wouldn’t have a chance going up. Heck, I wouldn’t have driven a 4×4 truck up that road.
So, we decided to walk it. Despite it being obvious that the road, and eventually the trail, were completely covered in snow, we decided to park along the highway and walk up to the trailhead.
Why the long story? Because this is the exact situation that Garmin’s inReach Mini 2 satellite communication tool was made for. The Mini 2 is the size of a small walkie-talkie with the ability to send and receive messages, send your exact location, log your route, guide you back, and even send an SOS message to a Garmin emergency response coordination center to get help.
Dear reader, I didn’t set out to put myself in this situation. I simply wanted to go on a hike, but it turned out to be a perfect scenario for the inReach Mini 2.
Providing Peace of Mind Wherever, WheneverJason Cipriani/TheStreet
Before starting up the road, I took it out and used the buttons on either side to navigate the menu. I set it to start tracking my location every two minutes and send a text message to my wife letting her know I was starting from a different spot, along with the location.
Sending a message takes a couple of minutes in my experience, but you know it’s gone through when you hear a fun chirp from the Mini 2. The tones are preset and you can’t customize them, so you’ll have to learn what each means before fully understanding what the Mini 2 is trying to tell you. A couple of minutes after I heard my original message go through, my wife texted back to have fun without questioning why we were starting at the highway.
For the next 25 minutes, we trekked up the snow-covered road and made it to the trail, only to find it was covered in even more snow than the road. As we stood there, trying to load the trail in the AllTrails app on our phones, the realization of no cellular signal set in. If we were going to try and attempt to stay on the trail, we would have to do it by looking for markers on trees — designed for cross country skiers — and hope that the snow wasn’t too deep. The Mini 2’s display isn’t very big, measuring 0.9-inches by 0.9-inches, and so it lacks the ability to show a map. There are larger inReach devices, like the $449 inReach, with full map capabilities.
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The inReach Mini 2 was still tracking our every movement, but I couldn’t view a map of the trail we were supposed to take. I could see, however, a rough route that we could take to get back to the car if we got lost.
About a quarter of a mile into the hike, we had come to a stop. We couldn’t see the next sign to let us know we were heading the right way, and the snow was getting deeper. Walking on it was a mystery if you’d fall through, at times to our waist, or keep floating across the surface. It was getting too dangerous to continue, so we took a break.
I pulled out my Mavic Air 2 drone to scout out the area and take a few photos. If you zoom in enough, you can see us, exhausted, amidst the trees.
Jason Cipriani/TheStreet
The entire day was a hilarious attempt to get a hike in before Mother Nature was ready, but that’s not to say I wasn’t ready either. There were a few times I stopped to ask myself what the hell we were doing, only to remember that I could, at the very least, lift the cover off of the giant SOS button and summon help. Thankfully things didn’t go that far, but the peace of mind in knowing that the button was there and available was reassuring.
Battery life barely took a hit during the 1 hour and 12-minute hike. Garmin estimates 14 days of battery life with tracking your location every 10 minutes, or 30 days of battery life when tracked every 30 minutes. The USB-C charge port is on the side of the Mini 2 and is covered when not in use. The benefit of using the Mini 2 instead of preloading maps on your phone is the extended battery life you get while also staying connected to the outside world. My iPhone used roughly 20% of the battery during this time while it searched for, gained and then lost reception.
Jason Cipriani/TheStreet
When I got back home, I wirelessly connected the inReach Mini 2 to the Garmin Explore app on my iPhone where I was able to view the second by second route we took, including the two spots I sent messages from, and a waypoint I set with the Mini 2.
Plan Ahead — You Never Know What Could HappenAt $399 inReach Mini 2 it isn’t cheap, but it’s loaded with technology that makes it possible to stay connected, regardless if you’re on-grid or off the grid. On top of paying for the device, you’ll need to sign up for a subscription plan either on a monthly or annual basis. Monthly plans start at $14.95 and max out at $64.95 a month. You get a slight discount when you sign up for a year, dropping the two plans down to $11.95 and $49.95 a month, respectively. These prices match similar subscription services for similar devices from the likes of Zoleo and Bivy.
Each plan includes a different number of text messages, tracking intervals, and access to the SOS network. For example, the Safety plan includes 10 text messages, with 10-minute tracking intervals. However, the Expedition plan gives you unlimited messages and a 2-minute tracking interval.
Bottom LineIf you spend a lot of time outdoors in areas with little or no cellular service or someone who doesn’t want to rely on a smartphone’s battery lasting through a weekend camping trip, the inReach Mini 2 is a worthy investment.
Prices are accurate and items in stock at time of publishing.