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She had cell service on the mountain, called 911 at 3 p.m., but rescuers couldn’t find her until after 9 p.m. It isn't clear in this article if it was a tech shortcoming or a SAR failure.

But other articles say that NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Forest Rangers, assisted by State Police, immediately mobilized snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, and a State Police helicopter. The helicopter carried two rangers for spotting but heavy/low cloud cover around the summit prevented any visual sighting. One ranger was dropped at a lower outpost (Marcy Dam) to search on foot/ground.

The delay stemmed from environmental and logistical challenges, not reported issues with cell phone GPS or location sharing:

Factor	Impact on Rescue	Details
Heavy Cloud Cover	Prevented helicopter visual location; no aerial spotting possible.	Key factor cited in official accounts; forced reliance on ground teams.
Winter Terrain & Conditions	Slow ground travel; deep snow, steep/rugged alpine zone near summit.	Ascending to summit in winter takes hours even for rangers; mobilization from base adds time.
Extreme Cold	Rapid onset of hypothermia; victim succumbed before ground teams arrived.	Autopsy confirmed hypothermia as cause of death; exposure in single-digit temps deadly within hours.
Location Factors	No reported GPS/cell inaccuracies; she was near summit, but off-trail.	Sources do not mention phone location problems; summit area is often above treeline (better GPS signal).

She had cell service to call 911, and E911 likely provided a GPS fix, but the off-trail position near the summit, combined with clouds blocking air search, meant rescuers had to hike in.

Modern cell phones use GPS to locate you within 5-50 meters outdoors. In open-sky conditions, GPS is accurate to 3-5 meters, light forest canopy 5-10 meters, and heavy/dense canopy 8-20 meters. Worst case very dense canopy is 50+ meters. External antennas or dedicated devices (like inReach) often fare slightly better under heavy cover due to design. So phone GPS fares well against Garmin.

One of the great features about the Garmin is that, when you press the SOS button, it immediately sends your exact GPS coordinates (typically accurate to 5–10 meters under good conditions) to the Garmin Response center, a 24/7 professional emergency monitoring team. The device then automatically enters enhanced tracking mode where location updates every minute for the first 10 minutes, then every 10 minutes.

The other good thing is that the InReach contacts the 24x7 Garmin Response Center directly. They confirm the emergency, ask questions, provide updates, and relay information to local rescuers. Garmin Response coordinates with appropriate local search and rescue (SAR) authorities worldwide, sharing your location and details.

But, in Mohr's case, it sounds like the NYS DES was on top of their game and did everything text-book. It was just a bad case of all the holes in the Swiss cheese lining up (as the fly-guys like to say).