A Jiobit GPS Tracker Helped Rescuers Find a Lost Father and Son

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Search and rescue crews in rural Vermont are praising a small electronic tracking device for helping them save two people in the backcountry.

On Saturday, December 7, Drew Clymer, the deputy chief of Stowe Mountain Rescue, received a call from a local woman who said her husband and eight-year-old son hadn’t returned from a backcountry ski outing. The sun had gone down and temperatures were plummeting, so Clymer radioed other members of the team to launch a rescue operation.

The region where the two had gone missing is called the Bruce Trail, which is located adjacent to Stowe Mountain Resort. A recent storm had dumped nearly a foot of fresh powder on the area.

“Everybody knows the Bruce,” Clymer said. “Back there you’re a long way from home if something goes wrong.”

The woman then told Clymer that her son was carrying a device called a Jiobit, a GPS tracking tag made for children. The device, which is about the size of a thumb drive, connects to a smartphone app that shows the location of the device on a map.

Clymer asked the woman to meet him at the Bruce Trail parking lot with her phone. When Clymer opened the Jiobit app, he could see the boy’s exact location on a detailed map, several miles from the trailhead. Clymer and other rescuers zipped into the backcountry on an ATV and found the missing duo within 15 minutes of departing. Stowe Mountain Rescue has not released the names of the rescued individuals.

“This was the easiest rescue I’ve ever been a part of,” he said.

Neither the father nor the boy had headlamps or extra clothing. They had planned to ski down the trail, but a broken binding forced them to walk. When SAR crews reached them, the father was bootpacking through deep snow while towing his son behind.

Clymer said the small device was “pivotal” for helping the two avert disaster.

“We were back at the trailhead with them in under 25 minutes,” said Clymer. “Coming from someone who spends most of his professional life searching for missing people, this thing was revelatory.”

Had crews been forced to search for the duo in the dark, Clymber believes they would have eventually located the two. But it would have taken several hours to find them in the dark, since neither the father or boy were carrying headlamps.

Similar to the Apple AirTag and other electronic tracking devices, the Jiobit shares location via cellular data, WiFi signals, and bluetooth. But the Jiobit also has GPS capabilities, which allow it to function in the backcountry where there’s no cellular signal.

The Jiobit is hardly the only device to boast these capabilities—Tack GPS, Gabb Watch, and SecuLife S4 all use GPS signals as well.

On its website, the product is described as “waterproof, durable, discreet, and provides accurate real-time tracking at any distance.”  It’s designed specifically to track kids, and comes with a locking device that cannot be disabled.

Clymber, who is also the search and rescue coordinator for the Vermont Department of Public Safety, said he plans to recommend GPS trackers to parents and also caregivers of the elderly. A sizable percentage of the SAR rescues in Stowe, he said, are for elderly people who suffer from dementia or Alzheimers. GPS tags, he said, could dramatically reduce the time it takes to locate them.

“It’s not a silver bullet,” he said. “But at least it gives you some peace of mind.”