What is AvAI?
AvAI is a safety companion app for backcountry travel, built by Rocky Mountain Digerati in Colorado. The core idea is old-school and proven — tell someone where you're going and when you'll be back — made automatic: you check out before heading into the field, and if you don't check back in on time, our servers alert the emergency contact you chose, with your last-known location.
AvAI is in beta. Do not rely on it as your only safety system. The check-out/check-in feature is being tested for reliability — bring a satellite communicator or radio for any backcountry trip.
Check out / check in — how it actually works
When you check out, you set a return time and AvAI's servers start watching the clock — not your phone. That distinction is the design's core property: once a check-out is armed, the watchdog runs server-side, so a dead battery, no signal, or a lost phone can't silence it. If your check-in time passes without word, your emergency contact gets an alert by text and email with your last-known location and, where we can identify one, the local search & rescue organization for the area. Checking out and in requires cell or internet signal; the alerts themselves are sent by our servers regardless of your connectivity. Delivery favors sending an alert twice over not at all, so occasional duplicates are by design.
Send Help
Beyond the scheduled check-in, AvAI has an active path: a Send Help button that immediately alerts your emergency contact with your location when you need assistance now. A retraction window and an "I'm OK" follow-up keep accidental triggers honest. AvAI alerts the people you chose — it does not contact 911 or rescue services on your behalf.
Field observations
AvAI includes a field capture tool for snowpack observations — profile and core photos framed on a crystal card, the same method behind our open Rocky Mountain Snowpack dataset. At this stage of the beta, photos stay on your device; a future opt-in flow will let users contribute captures to the public dataset with explicit consent.
Why "AvAI"?
The name is short for Avalanche AI. Alongside the app, we research avalanche-risk modeling on snowpack imagery — the open-source snowGAN models are the first public artifacts of that line. The research is in development and is not part of the app today; when it first ships it will be clearly labeled as a research preview.
Who runs it — honestly
AvAI is a safety companion app. When you schedule a check-in, AvAI's servers will alert your emergency contact if you don't check in on time. The servers run in multiple locations to keep working when one fails, but AvAI is operated by a small team and may have outages of hours or days. Use AvAI as one layer of your safety practice, not your only layer. Always carry a second safety plan — partner check-ins, satellite messenger (SPOT, Garmin inReach), filed trip plan, formal training.
Where it stands
AvAI is currently in TestFlight / Play Internal beta. If you're a backcountry traveler who wants in, a Search & Rescue team interested in the platform, or an emergency contact trying to understand a message you received, start at support — or create a portal account. How our safety texts work, including the exact messages we send, is documented at rmdig.ai/sms.