Over the weekend, a NYC hiker was dropped off by her husband in the morning around Randolf to climb Mt. Adams. She activated her rescue signal in the mid-afternoon but due to gales and -30F temperatures the rescuers were unable to find her until the following day between Mts. Madison and Adams.

http://www.wmur.com/news/rescuers-search-for-missing-hiker-near-mt-adams/31294362

She'd actually planned a Northern Presi Traverse (Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Washington), on a day with 100+MPH winds in the forecast. She started at 5:00 AM if I remember correctly, up Valley Way from Appalachia. She carried a GPS receiver/recorder which was recovered later: she'd made it up Madison and on to the summit of Adams before turning back. She chose the Star Lake trail (a difficult trail but her best remaining option IMO, given NW winds) and possibly fell/blew off from there. She hit the panic button on her PLB at 2:30 PM, I think [correction: 3:30 PM]. I'm hoping we'll see an official report to clarify what happened with the beacon: the initial pinpoint was (quite close to) her actual location near Star Lake, but by the time the team mobilized they'd gotten a new set of coordinates in the woods near Valley Way. They didn't find her at the new location, and called off the search for the night. It's not clear whether a better location would have made any difference to the outcome in this case (conditions were absolutely deadly, and they would still have taken hours to reach her), but since PLBs are fairly new technology it's important to have public, real-world examples of what kind of performance one can expect from them.

New press report with some new info: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015- ... -the-wild/
- the PLB was a ACR ResQLink

- At 11:00 AM she took a photo at Madison hut (not clear if this was the first or second time - i.e. before or after summiting Madison) . This was way behind her original plan, which was to be on Jefferson by then.

-She was seriously fit, doing daily 42-story stair climbs with a 60-lb pack.