My Garmin InReach Mini 2 Saved My Life

Everything was going good…and then it wasn’t. 

A few weeks back, I extolled the virtues of Garmin’s inReach Mini 2 GPS, in which I proclaimed it to be the one piece of powersports gear you should never leave home without. Whether you’re riding a motorcycle, snowmobile, ATV, driving a UTV, or out anywhere in the backcountry where service is spotty, it should be attached to your person. 

Hand on heart, I didn’t think I’d have to put it to the test so soon after hitting "Publish." But I’m here writing this story because of it.

It all started like so many other days. I’d just picked up a pre-production snowmobile and went for a late afternoon rip in the backcountry. I know the area well, having hunted and ridden all manner of dirtbikes and motorcycles, as well as driven our family’s Can-Am Maverick X3 through on numerous occasions. It's my home turf. So I felt comfortable going alone for what I felt would be a quick, two-hour trek.

I'd grab some content for our social channels (please like and subscribe) and be back well before dinner. And like I said above, everything was going great. In fact, it was awesome. I was the only person back there, having fields and mountains all to myself. I could go fast, go slow, and grab a ton of stuff for later use all without having anyone else’s two-stroke snowmobile yapping in the background.

It was a stunning day. 

But as I made my way deeper, I heard a beep come from the sled’s infotainment screen and an “Engine Overheat” warning began blarring on the dash. I pulled over, shut the sled down, and decided to wait 15 minutes to see if it cooled off. “That’s odd,” I recall saying to myself, as I hadn’t pushed the snowmobile super hard, and had taken frequent breaks to stop and shoot video and photos, plus admire the astounding beauty around me. 

Yet, after the stop, the temp hadn’t gone down and as soon as I started turning the sled back toward my truck some 13 miles away, it went from “Engine Overheat” to puking every ounce of coolant it had within its systems.

The realization of me being stranded and the isolation I’d loved just an hour or so before quickly became “Oh shit, I’m actually alone.”

After dragging the broken sled off the