Backcountry skiing with APRS - amateur radio practice for emergency communications

We took amateur radio with us up the mountain on a ski tour. While the skiing wasn't great, we were able to keep in touch with the world, more or less through APRS. What a fantastic service and attribute for amateur radio operators. As a backcountry skier, it is phenomenal way to stay in contact when you can use it. Here, we had little cell phone service and it was nice to let family and friends know where we were. Backcountry skiing typically has risks on every outing.

As for the mountain, we'll be back. Hopefully with more snow. Until the next time, keep the comms lines open.

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Bob Bruninga, WB4APR became a Silent Key on February 7, 2022. Personally, I'm grateful for his contributions to amateur radio. APRS being the mainstay to all of that. Rest in peace, Bob.

I used APRSLink to access Winlink. The gateway for that is WLNK-1.

For sending text messages out we used gateway SMSGTE.

All these protocols require a bit of reading to be sure you're doing it right. But man, what a great time on the mountain.

There will be more on this as I understand it more.