Just bought and used a Garmin mini In Reach 2 for the first time.

Used it where there was pretty big tree cover canopy (Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness in NC). It wouldn't track or it would say "poor connection - tracking will be inaccurate". This seemed to drain the battery really, really quickly, so I ended up keeping it off and just turning it on a few times a day to send one of the free "Check-In" messages, "I'm checking in. Everything is ok."

I had left my overall route with someone at home, and I figured worst case, I fall and am rendered unconscious, between my roughly preplanned route and the occasional check-in, they could find my body reasonably quickly once they started looking. Not too worried about that - absolutely worst case obviously.

More importantly, keeping it mainly turned off and only turning it on briefly a few times a day to send a check-in message was my workaround to preserve battery life and to send tracking points without getting overage charges.

Am planning on telling my person at home that 1) "I'm starting my trip" means "Am leaving camp." and 2) "I'm ending my trip" means "Here for the night." That way I can tell them when I stop for the night, when I leave camp in the morning, and the third message any time during the day's hiking that I'm fine. This is in lieu of leaving the tracking on which I haven't figured out how to use without running the battery down, or at least not in the heavy woods where I tend to backpack. If I do this, worst case they'd be able to find me pretty quickly once they start searching, and it means I'll have battery life for the much more likely scenario of me sending out an SOS (badly twisted ankle, broken leg...). And it keeps me in touch with home - don't see any need yet for using the custom texting function much.

There's no way to actually edit the Check-In messages, is there? We're stuck with the three Check-In messages that they give us? I know there's the custom text message option, so I guess if you could edit the free Check-In messages, that would be too easily a work-around to avoid paying for custom texts, right?

I use the freedom safety plan, one month at a time, about 15 bucks.

Something else I haven't figured out yet - had it on first day at home. tracking turned off. In 24 or so hours, battery dropped from 100% to 58%. This plus watching it struggle with tree cover is what initially led me to the strategy of leaving it off most of the time and just turning it on for an occasional check-in message.

Had an iphone with too. But managing the battery life is rough and I read another thread here that I agree with for now that iphones aren't as robust and can have terrible battery life.

I have to figure out how battery dropped 40% in 24 hours without background tracking turned on. How does this square up with your experience and strategies to use it? Suggestions, insights, related experiences welcome. Thanks and happy hiking!!!!