communicating with searchers when you need to be rescued

Well, overseas I rely on my inReach since it covers all but areas close to the poles. It doesn't have a local beacon. The SOS signal and your coordinates are relayed to a station in Texas (if I remember right), which then contacts a SAR team in your area. The SAR team is often coordinated with local authorities.

Yes, they need a clear view of the sky, and it can take a couple of minutes for it to connect to the satellites, but a PLB won't work some places I go.

GMRS was what I used for a while with larger groups. You have to be almost on top of each other for them to work. A physical barrier can block signal, and I found those five mile ranges were wildly overestimated. Maybe a mile or two. And the batteries die within a day, if you leave them on while hiking. We use instead the policy of stopping at every trail junction, or putting the slowest person in front and letting them pace the group at large.

I teach a backpacking class - it's my way of doing preventive SAR, teaching others safe practices and sometimes they are even interested enough to learn basic navigation skills.

I am no lawyer -- but I know a few. Civil attorneys gave me advice before I started doing any group organizing. One of them specialized in wilderness legalities.

In a court of law, if it comes about that you end up there after something bad happens in the wilderness, there's a lot of "it depends." Those waivers some groups like the Sierra Club make you sign are only part of the larger picture -- in a court that waiver is maybe 50% effective. Liability is a sticky thing. If Joe Noob takes a group of his friends out, doesn't even have basic first aid, and one of the friends has an issue that leads to his death, then friend's family sues Joe -- Joe will be able to tell the judge "we were just on a hike! He had a heart attack! What was I supposed to do?" And the judge would have to say he did the best he could, if Joe sent people back for help, and help was so far away no one could get there in time. Joe has no training and no skills. He went hiking like so many tourists do, and had bad luck. He didn't know his friend had heart issues and had not enough experience or training to understand that it might be a good idea to have a PLB or something else if someone in the group has medical issues.

If I am in Joe's place, I can't argue the same way. I have the equivalent of an EMT cert -- an 80 hour Wilderness First Responder certification. I taught navigation and also learned how to operate a search, as any of us volunteers could be the first on site and need to take point on setting up teams and getting them deployed. I would have to say, if I made the same choices as Joe, that I fully understood all the risks of wilderness travel and did not mitigate them adequately. I would have to say that I knew there was such a thing as a Personal Locator Beacon and did not bring it, and knew that I should have a clue about the friend maybe having a heart issue and being less determined to get to the peak, paid attention to him more, so when he started to look pale and hold his arm (people frequently don't talk about feeling poorly because they don't want to "hold up the group") I would have stopped and immediately determined whether he had nitro on him and if he wanted to administer it (people in distress don't think straight, particularly if there are multiple things going on, such as possibly dehydration, so they may not think about the things they have with them). I would be more at fault than Joe because I really did know better.

Organizing trips isn't a regimented thing, because I'm still only hiking with friends and social groups most of the time. But I do have things like trauma shears, disinfectants, and quick clot (that's because I am trail crew and saws increase risk of gaping, bloody wounds) on some trips, particularly week long ventures far into the backcountry with people I don't really know yet, though I always get plenty of information before we start out. But, I have also learned that the draw of the Bucket List will lead people to lie to me about their abilities or anything they think the truth will keep them from being able to do. I had a fellow vomiting all the way back to the trailhead confess to me such -- he was having severe elevation issues and we kept filtering and pouring water through him, giving him tums and trying to hydrate him. It stopped finally when he actually TOOK the tums - it turned out he had far too much coffee at breakfast and it turned his stomach right over, and then he confessed he'd been having headaches and feeling sick, but didn't want to say anything. And then he said he appreciated the opportunity to go because he hadn't been out in 30 years, when before the trip he claimed to be a 'frequent backpacker' to get on the trip in the first place. In this case, he lied -- that would have counted against him, for me, in court. I would not have taken him on a very high elevation trip ascending more than 5000 feet in a day from 7000. He was quite sore and feeling beat up. Limped back to the car.

Which is going to lead to the question of why I keep doing this. Because even though 85% of the people in the social groups only come out once or twice, and a handful per year give me stories to tell about how not to backpack, the rest of the time I get a large pool of people to go with, defraying the dreaded dropout syndrome. My fishing buddy is a doctor, SAR volunteer, and close friend - I met him through this process of hiking with social groups full of "strangers" (a stranger is only a friend you haven't got to know yet, the rest are rule outs). I have other friends who only day hike, and other friends who snow camp (very small pool for that, but six of us are going this weekend, taking a noob with us, going to be fun).

As to why I got all the training, instead of just having fun... I like helping people. I do it professionally in a very different way, and I do it on a paraprofessional basis in this way. I have foot issues that make me a liability to searches so I focus on preventive SAR -- things like this post.

There is a very good section on group leadership in Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills, which is not about backpacking but about mountaineering - but there is plenty for the casual backpacker who cares to know more, to defray their own level of risk.

I think the biggest problem is not getting a GPS lock, in which case, they know who you are, but don't know where to look. Once again, this underscores the importance of leaving a detailed itinerary behind.

Short-term vs long-term risk. The latter is usually a worse way to go.