Call of the wild

I FIRST TOOK a mobile on a US trip in 1996. It was a walloping great Motorola handset that weighed half a ton, and the charger weighed another half a ton. They swallowed a significant proportion of my luggage weight allowance and doubled up as an exercise aid. Finding a connection to use the thing took ages (we’re talking pre-3G here) and was very hit and miss. You needed a triband phone, as the yanks used an inferior analogue communication standard to us sophisticated Brits – something to do with the CIA needing to listen in on your calls, I seem to remember.


On this month’s trip to Baton Rouge and Seattle, I “de-planed” in Newark. I turned on the BlackBerry and found I was connected to T-Mobile. I was then greeted by a text from O2 announcing that calls to the UK would cost 90 pence per minute and texts would be 25p each. Anything involving data would cost £6 per megabyte. I’d need to start the trip with a bank robbery if I wanted to contact anybody.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

My mountain-climbing buddy, Lee, was collecting me at Red Stick airport, so I tried calling him to say the connecting flight was leaving on time. I dialled 830 557 7891 only to be told it was “out of service”. I got the customer to call Lee for me, but they were out of service, too. I then dialled 001 830 557 7891 and got an engaged tone (Lee spends half his life on the phone). So, to make a call to somebody in the USA when I’m in the USA, I must pretend I’m in the UK and pay international call rates to contact somebody who’s in the same country as me? It didn’t used to be like this. A few years ago, you just added the UK +44 code in front of the number when calling home, and only needed the local number to talk to local people. As the meerkats would say, “Simples!”


In the end, I sent Lee a quick email while connected to the free (I hoped) airport Wi-Fi. In theory, even emailing over the T-Mobile connection should only have cost 12-thousandths of a penny at £6 per megabyte but, hey, you’ve got to save where you can.


While working in Red Stick, I used Skype to chat with Mrs R. The Lenovo has a webcam and, as she’s just acquired a similar model, we could also use video to help shrink the miles. Ahh. Again, using Wi-Fi, it cost nowt.


This was fine, until it was time to fly to Seattle to climb Mount Rainier. I didn’t want to take the laptop, partly to save weight and partly because I didn’t want to leave it in a hire car for a week while we were schlepping up the slopes. So, it was back to the BlackBerry, which is OK if you can find a Wi-Fi connection and stick to emails or Google Chat.


I looked at installing Skype, which you can do easily – but only with a Verizon account. Got an Android phone? Skype works fine. An iPhone? That’s fine, too. Skype used to be available for general use on a BlackBerry, but it’s been withdrawn. No wonder RIM is losing market share.


In Ashford (Washington State, population 210), I had free Wi-Fi at the bunkhouse so I could send and receive emails, but the phone connection worked only for the chosen few with Verizon accounts. T-Mobile? “No chance,” said the locals at the grocery store, built in 1905 and last painted in 1906.


So which electronics, if any, should I take up the mountain? Rainier would involve technical climbing with ropes, ice axes and crampons. And if you wanted to wear it, use it or eat it on Rainier, you had to carry it up there yourself; there was no handing it over to some poor Sherpa. Five layers of clothes, a sleeping bag, a safety helmet, a head torch, a harness, four days of high-calorie nosh and water filled my 70-litre rucksack to busting and weighed over two-and-a-half stone. Room for the Kindle? Afraid not. My one luxury was my MP3 player.


I must be getting old. One member of our eight- strong party toted a Canon EOS 5D, weighing 1.1kg in its case, plus three lenses, an iPhone, an iPad and a Freeloader solar charger to power it all from. He even had a GoPro HD Hero camera to strap to his climbing helmet to record high-definition movies; it had a surface area of six square inches, and the manufacturers had used most of that for this message: “For best sound in high wind use: < 100 mph: non-waterproof skeleton door > 100 mph: waterproof standard door.” It was clearly designed for the clinically insane. I hoped I was coming down the mountain without having to consider the second setting.


Still, as a Verizon user, he got a perfect phone service signal at 10,000 feet up, and spent hours on the iPhone chatting to his wife, kids and friends. Grrr.

SNOW WAY OUT

Sadly, all the planning and training didn’t get us to the top of the mountain. At the start of the summit attempt (1am on Sunday morning), the wind increased to 60mph, and there was a foot of extra snow in just a few hours – whiteout conditions. So much for supercomputers and short-term weather forecasts! A couple of guys got within 500 vertical feet of the top, but had to turn back. My own efforts came to an end long before that, thwarted by a mountain feature aptly known as the Disappointment Cleaver.


Am I disappointed? Not at all. To quote the late Steve Jobs, “The journey is the reward”. My experience was still well worth the time, expense and effort. However, to call home, I did the only thing I could do: “Lee, can I borrow your iPhone, please?”