Very lucky they had signal!

In our waterways this time of year calls are common since there are sheer dropoffs and no entry / exit for miles at a stretch, sometimes rapids, swiftwater and blockages not obvious from the entry point, depending on how the weather's been. People hop in on tubes and swimwear and that's it, sometimes a cell phone and some beer.

They'll start out late afternoon on a route that takes 6 hours, end up calling after pitch dark because they can't see and it's gotten cold.

The most commonly used item when we arrive on scene is a space blanket. The most common comment I get was "we thought the river looped back around to the starting point"

It's important to have a good idea of their location, because there may be an entry point close to the cell phone ping but we don't want to inadvertently enter downstream of them. However, we don't want to put in so far upriver that it takes an extended amount of time to get to them either if we can put in closer, especially if there's a medical issue.

Fortunately, most parts in my AO have full cell coverage, and a common technique we use is to have them pull up their location on google maps, zoom out a little bit and take a screenshot to send to the incident commander's phone and we can go from there.

I have been introducing drones, but we run into legal VLOS issues because Tennessee has some tree canyons...