The Problem: Information in the Backcountry is Broken
Let me introduce myself. My name is Scott. I am an adventure enthusiast and thrill seeker. My best friend Jack and I spent two summers guiding on the Main Salmon River. We guided remote trips in the Frank Church Wilderness. This is the most remote river in the lower 48. Jack and I would go without cell service for 8 days at a time, completely disconnected from civilization. This is beautiful but also inconvenient at times. I’ll get to that.
Being a river guide isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, cupcake. Like it actually isn’t. The weather changes all the time when you are in the river. Wind direction changes, which completely cook you when you are rowing a sailboat full of tired guests. One minute you can be rowing in the sunshine, the next minute you will be rowing in the hail. Our guests would always ask for the weather forecast, but we never had a reliable way to get it, so we would lie to them.
The weather is bad, and fires are much worse. Fires can change directions due to wind and travel miles without you knowing. Before you know it, your camp could be engulfed in flames. We needed a solution that could give us a wide range of information and forecasts while in the backcountry. We didn’t want ordinary forecasts; we wanted forecasts that anyone could easily read. We wanted forecasts tailored to your adventure.
The Vision: Information, Anywhere.
That’s what led to Expedition Genie.
We had a question. What if you could just text something and get a real answer, no matter where you are? No signal, no internet, didn’t matter.
We started messing around with it, trying to make it actually work. The first version was as scrappy as it gets. We had everything running off an old iPhone, just relaying messages back and forth. It wasn’t pretty, but it proved the point.
Eventually, we upgraded to a Mac Mini and started dialing things in.
What we ended up with is pretty simple.
You text a number, and you get a response from a powerful AI, even when you’re out of service. It runs through satellite texting, so if your phone can send a message, it works.
No apps. No setup. No learning curve.
You can ask about weather, river flows, avalanche conditions, gear questions, anything you’d normally look up, but can’t when you’re off-grid.
We didn’t build this for everyone.
We built it for people who actually spend time out there: guides, skiers, hunters. People who don’t have the option to just “check later.”
Right now, we’ve got about 25 people using it.
It’s still early, still improving, but it works. That’s the part that matters.
The goal isn’t to build something flashy.
It’s to make sure that when you need information, you can actually get it.
Check it out at expeditiongenie.com
For only $7 per month, you can make informed decisions in the backcountry. Cancel any time, get your first 7 days free.
