The best safety tool on a remote hike is a well-informed person at home. The Emergency tab collects who to contact and what they need to know, then delivers it to them properly.
Emergency Contacts
Each member adds their own emergency contacts — name, relationship, phone and email, plus notes. Add contacts once in your profile and they're brought onto each hike you join automatically. Contacts added for a hike are used for that hike's safety brief and post-hike check-in.
You can also record emergency notes about yourself for the hike — allergies, medications, blood type, anything a rescuer or worried contact should know. These are visible to your packmates and included in the safety brief.
Pack Shadows can have contacts and notes too, added by whoever manages them — the brief should cover everyone walking, not just the app users.
PLBs And Satellite Beacons
Register the group's PLBs and satellite communicators: device name, hex ID, battery expiry and notes. There's a checkbox to record that the beacon's registration (e.g. AMSA in Australia) has been updated with this trip — an easy thing to forget and a crucial one.
The Safety Brief
When the plan is ready, send the safety brief: an email to every emergency contact with an email address (you get a copy too). It contains:
- the hike name and dates, and everyone walking with their phone numbers
- each hiker's emergency notes
- an overview map of the planned routes, camps, water points and marked spots
- the day-by-day itinerary — camps, travel and daily route stats
- food drop locations, and the full contact and PLB lists
- the planned route files attached — your contact can open them in any mapping app and see precisely where you intend to be
That's the difference between "they're hiking somewhere in the Snowies" and handing search and rescue an exact planned line.
Route files are attached under the name they were uploaded with, which is often
something like export-2026-08-02.kml. So the email also carries a legend pairing
each attachment with the routes inside it and the day of the walk each one covers.
A Personal Message
The send dialog has an optional message box. Whatever you write appears near the top of the email, above the hike details — the place for the things a plan can't hold: where the car is parked, when you expect to be back in phone range, who to ring first.
Confirming It Arrived
Tick "Ask them to confirm they got it" and each contact's copy carries a one-tap button. When they use it, their contact card on the Emergency tab flips from Awaiting confirmation to Confirmed, so a typo'd address or a brief sitting in a spam folder doesn't go unnoticed. Nobody needs an account to confirm, and each contact gets their own link — so you can tell exactly which of them replied.
Sending the brief again reissues the request, since what matters is whether they have the current plan.
Note: Pack Hiker nudges you if it matters: members without any contacts get a reminder email 6 days before the start, and if the brief hasn't been sent 4 days out, you'll be reminded to send it.
After The Brief
Trip details changed? Send it again — contacts simply get the updated version. And for automated follow-through when the hike ends, arm the post-hike check-in.