You won’t forget to take this whistle on your next hike or trip.

It's become an important part of our EDC (Every Day Carry) over recent years: the whistle. The classic use of the safety whistle is, of course, signaling you're in distress and need help: three sharp blasts in succession, followed by a pause of at least one minute, and repeated until a response is received. The shrill sound of a whistle is likely to carry much farther than the human voice and require much less energy. Remember, the number three is key in distress situations: a distress signal can be three fires or piles of rocks in a triangle, three blasts on a whistle, or three flashes of a light. Worldwide travel expert Jodi Ettenberg has a great post on safety whistles. You might be surprised to read about the situations in which her whistle came in handy — read all about it here (her whistle is different than ours, but you get the idea).

Have a dog (or two or four) that hike with you? Train them to come to the sound of your whistle. It'll likely take repeated practice, patience, and lots of high value treats to train your dog to come to the sound of a whistle, but it can be very useful in situations when your dogs are off leash and you need them to return immediately. (If you're whistling for your dog, or just testing out your new whistle, try one sharp blast or two, and make sure to give enough time between blasts so that no one thinks you're really in trouble.)

Our Whistle Sternum Strap Half features a nearly impossible-to-lose whistle integrated into the male (usually the left) half of the sternum strap buckle used on our Brain Bag, Synapse 19, Synapse 25, Luminary, Hero's Journey and Guide's Pack backpacks, as well as our convertible travel bags — the Tri-Star, the Aeronaut 45, Aeronaut 30 and the Western Flyer. The Whistle Sternum Strap Half is available as an optional upgrade on all these bags: select one at the time you buy one of those backpacks and you'll receive it along with the standard sternum strap, allowing you to swap or carry a strap. The Whistle Sternum Strap Half replaces just one-half of the standard sternum strap and is also available on this page for purchase on its own for anyone with any of the above bags — but note that the Strap Half won't work on TOM BIHN packs made before about 2005 — those have a 1" wide sternum strap and this new whistle strap won't work with that. To install the Whistle Sternum Strap Half: simply remove the standard male half of the sternum strap half you've been using all these years and replace it with the Whistle Sternum Strap Half.

Available in Steel Grey if you want your whistle to be obvious and easy to see, or Bright Orange if you want it to be really obvious and really easy to see.