The story brought up a question in my mind — she reported having been aware of the search helicopters but that they couldn’t see her. If she had had a signal mirror (in the daytime) or a powerful flashlight (at night) that could have made a difference, but that isn’t my question.
She was under very heavy cover low down on the mountain. A mirror might have helped the first day. The weather turned cloudy the second day. A strobe might have helped. She built a fire, but it wasn't spotted by the aircraft FLIR. Keep in mind this was right before the solstice, when we had 19 hrs 17 min of official daylight. During daylight the earth warms, which tends to degrade FLIR performance. Also, it is possible she built the fire after the aircraft stopped flying that day.
I carry a handheld VHF/UHF amateur radio transceiver when I’m almost anywhere out of my house. Would SAR aircraft be listening on ham radio calling frequencies? Or the Marine VHF calling frequency * ?
. If it were a search over water, they might be guarding Marine Ch 16.
A better bet would be to carry an aviation band handheld radio. Call on 121.500 MHz AM, the Aviation Distress (VHF Guard) frequency. In Alaska back in the day, before sat phones, Spot, and InReach, parties in remote areas sometimes would carry an aviation handheld for emergency use. The idea was that if you saw a plane anywhere in the area, you could try to call them. I recall hearing at least one anecdote where a party in a remote area managed to call an airliner flying over at 30,000 ft, who relayed their distress message.
Best idea of all is to carry an InReach or PLB.
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