A hiker's last known position, before anyone calls it in
SAR Helper records where a hiker has been walking, and gives them a way to put
their coordinates in front of a responding team — before an emergency, or moments before they
dial.
It never dispatches anyone, and it never contacts a
team. No alert, no pager, no email. It is a database that gets looked in once a
call has already arrived through the normal channels.
That is deliberate. A system that pages a volunteer team gets
switched off after the third false alarm. This one costs nothing until the day it helps.
Two problems it addresses
People do not report a position until well after it would have been useful
Most people who get into difficulty in the backcountry are not certain they are in
difficulty. They are unsure. They wander, and they usually find the trail again — and
because they are unsure, they do not want to waste anybody's time. So they say nothing, for
hours, until it is dark and they are cold and now they are genuinely lost, several
kilometres from where the trouble started.
By then the useful information — where were they when things started going wrong,
and which way were they heading — is gone. A search begins with a trailhead and a
description.
SAR Helper tries to capture that earlier, by making the ordinary act of recording a
position cost the hiker nothing at all.
Coordinates still often do not survive the 911 call
In Canada today a caller's GPS position frequently does not reach the responding team
through the call itself. The hiker is on the phone reading numbers off a screen, or
describing a creek, and the coordinates get written down, relayed, and sometimes lost
between the call taker and the people walking in.
SAR Helper gives that a second, direct path. A hiker who flags themselves — which the
app encourages them to do before dialling — has already put an exact position in
a database the responding team can open. The call still happens through the normal
channels; the coordinates simply do not depend on it.
The flow, step by step
A hiker walking the Habrich Loop from the top of the gondola. Each step shows
what they see, and what a responding team would see afterwards.
Step 1 — at the top of the gondola
A hiker sees a SAR Helper QR code posted at a trailhead
What the hiker sees
A weatherproof sticker on the trailhead board, carrying a domain a person can
remember and a short code identifying that particular sign.
Scanning it is the only thing they have to think of doing. There is no app to have
heard of beforehand and nothing to sign up for.
The domain is the largest line, so it can be recalled hours later
without the sign in front of them.
What SAR sees
Nothing. A scan on its own records the code and the
time — not the phone, not an address, nothing about who walked past. Somebody who
scans a poster out of curiosity has not entered the system.
There is one long-term benefit. Signs learn their own position from the hikers who
scan them and then share a location, so nobody has to survey where each one was
installed, and a sign that gets moved corrects itself.
Step 2 — immediately after scanning
The scan opens the app, or the website
What the hiker sees
With the app It opens on a check-in screen for that sign, offering to
start sharing and to take a trip plan.
Without it — the common case A page that loads on one bar of
signal.
Nothing is sent until the hiker presses something.
What SAR sees
Still nothing. The website is not a cut-down version
of the app — it is a way to send one position without installing anything, for the
majority who will never install it.
The page a scan opens when there is no app. Under 7 KB on the wire.
Step 3 — setting off
The hiker checks in, and can leave a trip plan
What the hiker sees
A single form: a position, and an optional note. The note is where a trip plan goes
— where they are going, when they expect to be back, what they are wearing.
No account, no sign-up. Identity is a random id the phone generates for that
outing.
Checking in is phrased as routine, because it is.
What SAR sees
A track begins, with the trip plan attached to it. It is the hiker's own words about
what they intended — which is often not where they ended up, and is frequently
the single most useful sentence in a search.
Timestamped, and labelled as intent rather than fact — plans change, and
the console says so rather than letting a searcher read it as a position.
Step 4 — walking
The app records a position about once a minute
What the hiker sees
One screen with a map, and an unmistakable statement of whether the app is sharing
or not. A notification stays up the whole time it runs.
With no signal it keeps recording and sends the backlog when signal returns. The map
draws the hiker their own trail, so it doubles as a way back.
Two states, ever: sharing, or not sharing.
What SAR sees
A live map of everyone currently reporting in the team's area. A phone that stops
reporting for ten minutes is marked gone dark — usually a flat battery
or a valley with no coverage, occasionally something else.
Someone who used the website instead sends one position and then nothing,
and the console says so rather than implying they are still being followed.
Step 5 — something feels wrong
The hiker marks that they may be lost, then calls 911
What the hiker sees
One step up from something they have already done. It says plainly that nobody has
been notified and no rescue has been sent.
Standing down is always the other option, and always first. The 911 button is the
only route to a call in the whole product, and it opens the keypad rather than
dialling.
Flagging first means the coordinates are already recorded when the call
connects.
What SAR sees
The track is flagged, with whatever the hiker typed attached to it — and an exact
position that did not have to survive being read aloud down a phone line.
A hiker who checked in at the gondola and flagged two hours later has given a search
two fixes and a direction. Keeping those two levels apart is the
entire design: a hiker offered only "I am lost" usually sends nothing at all, because
pressing it feels like raising an alarm.
What the team opens: the flag, the hiker's own words, the plan they set
off with, and the note they wrote about themselves.
Every screen in the app says that nobody has been
notified. It is repeated to the point of monotony, because a hiker who believes a
rescue is already coming will sit still and wait for it.
What a responding team sees
One hiker. Name, year of birth and the note are optional and typed by the hiker —
nothing is verified, and the console says so.The route walked, oldest to newest, and the exports: GPX, GeoJSON, CalTopo,
Google Maps. Coordinates copy in decimal degrees and in degrees-and-decimal-minutes — the
format that gets read over a radio.
How a callout would go
6:40 pm
The hiker comes off the loop, flags themselves in
the app, and calls 911.
6:52 pm
The call reaches the team through the channels it always does.
SAR Helper has played no part so far.
6:55 pm
Someone with a console login searches the name, or draws a polygon
around the area.
6:56 pm
If the hiker used it: an exact position, the route they walked to get
there, how much battery remained, and the plan they set off with.
6:56 pm
If they did not: nothing, and the search proceeds exactly as it would
have.
The last row matters as much as the one above it. This is not a system anyone has to rely
on. It is a system that occasionally saves hours.
What a team would need to provide
Sign-in
Existing Google or Microsoft accounts, restricted to the team's
domain. No new passwords.
An area
A polygon for the ground the team is responsible for. It decides
which tracks they can see, and which hikers are told they are covered.
Nothing else
No integration, no radio work, no change to how the team is
dispatched, and no obligation to look at it.
Data, plainly
Kept for
7 days, then deleted. A safety net, not a
record.
Who can see it
Only teams whose area covers the position. Hikers outside any
registered area are told, in the app, that nobody is reading it.
Identity
None. A random id per outing. A name only if one is typed.
Residency
The intent is that data stays in the jurisdiction it was collected
in, and the design routes it that way. No residency guarantee will be claimed until there
is a contract behind it — if that matters to a team, it is one of the first things to
settle rather than something to take on trust from a web page.
At rest
Free text a hiker writes is intended to be encrypted, with the keys
held apart from the database, so that a stolen copy of the database is not a copy of
everyone's private circumstances. Access is by sign-in and area, with no key for a team to
install or lose. Planned, not yet built.
Where this actually is
The app and the console are built and working; the screenshots above
are of the real thing. The hosted service they would run on is not: today it is a single
server suitable for a pilot, the console sign-in is a development placeholder, and encryption
at rest is designed but unwritten.
Saying that is better than showing a page that implies otherwise.
If a team is interested, the first conversation is about what would have to be true before
they would put real callouts near it.
SAR Helper is free, carries no advertising, and collects
nothing it does not show. In an emergency, call 911 — this system cannot.
