Just completed our trek (715-C, Itinerary 25) and wanted to let everyone know our experience with cell phone coverage in the backcountry. I know, I know…leave your cell phones at home…blah, blah, blah…the reality is that most of us will take them with us, so here’s what we experienced.
TL;DR: T-Mobile was the best, AT&T was very good and Verizon only worked on top of Baldy or ToT.
In Basecamp, T-Mobile worked great. Our AT&T users also got signal, but not as strong (which is odd). Verizon had only extended 3G.
Our trek started in the South and moved North. In most of our campsites in the South (Backache Springs, Crater Lake, Shaefer’s Pass, Hunting Lodge, Visto Grande), T-mobile and AT&T had good signal and Verizon had no signal. Once we moved North (Head of Dean Cow, Miranda, Flume Canyon, Ponil) the results were about the same. There were certainly times when we didn’t have coverage, but in general, we had surprisingly good coverage on T-Mobile and AT&T in the backcountry. Verizon only seemed to work on the peaks – 2 bars of LTE on ToT and 4 bars LTE on top of Baldy.
YMMV, but that’s what we saw.
Cross post from: https://www.reddit.com/r/philmont/comments/6qjg7n/philmont_cell_phone_coverage/
