Reliance on GPS Devices

It wouldn't take much to become disoriented in rough terrain especially in overcast conditions.

The point I wanted to make is that you should never totally transfer the responsibility for knowing where you, where your assets are or the location of the place you need to return, to an electronic device.
I remember an instance when my wife totally disabled my Garmin by poking the touch screen on a trip...a la a The Three Stooges instead of touching it gently...to the point where it froze it to a point where even the power On/Off button wouldn't work. But fortunately we had maps in the car to guide us...crude as they may be...until the Garmin's battery eventually ran out of power hours later and the unit reset itself.

In the case of using an IDC Ecco Personal Locator you should still make an effort to know where you're parked or where your hotel is located in addition to marking the location with the Ecco. The Ecco is ultra reliable and it may well be that you'll never not be led back to your starting point by your Ecco. But you should be prepared in the unlikely event that it stopped working.

GPS Redundancy
I saw an episode of Survivorman on TV where he was hunting with a friend in the mountains and deep woods...I couldn't even tell you where he was...but suffice it to say that it was in the "middle of nowhere", it was cold, raining and he had no food. You know...the sort of place he normally goes where people like us would be dead in a matter of hours.

He was using a sophisticated hand held GPS device and had used it to mark the location of his hunting buddy's tree stand. He then traveled a significant distance to his hunting stand location using a ATV which he had to park and then walk a significant distance. But before leaving the ATV he again set a way point using his GPS device so he could find it for the return. Now there is absolutely no more competent person in the world for not getting lost. But in this case he forgot to turn the GPS device off and in the morning it was dead and useless.

He never did find the location of the ATV. He found his way back to his friend on foot but it was touch and go. But it just goes to show that extremely intelligent, incredibly competent people do make dumb mistakes that can be life threatening.

The point here is that redundancy is important. If he had a simple IDC Ecco GPS Locator in his pocket in addition to the GPS hand held unit he could have easily used both devices to mark those critical locations. An IDC Ecco Personal Pocket GPS Locator is really cheap insurance you shouldn't be without. So if you have a friend who hunts, hikes, camps or fishes and they tell you they already have a GPS you might want to relay this story to them.