Should a hiker rent an emergency personal locator beacon for safety?

After several recent wilderness tragedies, where cellphones were insufficient, and beacon rentals were available, it seems to make sense for back-country hikers and other adventurers to carry a PLB. Unlike an avalanche victim locater, a PLB communicates an emergency signal to a satellite, and a good-quality unit includes a GPS (interface or internal) that will encode your location into the distress signal.

Once the digital information is received, the worldwide search and rescue organizations coordinate to confirm you are missing and then dispatch local agencies to locate you on the ground or at sea.

These things are now reasonably priced (for the amount of assistance they may trigger), and can even be rented online or at some outfitters near major wilderness areas.

In November 2007 a new consumer device (Find me SPOT) was introduced that has a GPS emergency feature, but also allows the user to signal "okay" or other pre-programmed messages to friends, or even "tracking" information that can be displayed on a digital map. Unlike PLB or EPIRB (which are monitored by government agencies), the SPOT requires an annual subscription to a private monitoring service. Yet, for around $150 for the unit and $100 per year you can get a lot of peace of mind for people who worry about where you might be. Although PLBs have a higher initial cost than SPOT, nationwide rentals are available beginning at about $50/wk on the Web from organizations like PLBRentals.com. While the SPOT provides the "okay" and "tracking" information, PLBs are only activated in an emergency and have dual location technologies including both Doppler and GPS resulting in a much better chance that the distress signal will be received by SAR (Search and Rescue).