Adirondack Mountain News posted a very good summary of what happens in New York whenever a hiker needs help from the rangers.  This is specifically the process that is done in NY where we're relatively unique in that the Rangers are in charge of all SAR activities on state lands.  Other locations in the country it could be any number of agencies and isn't always consistent with who is in charge.  That said though, the overall process and the insights into how the searches are run should be consistent across the country, if not world.  The full post by them is here:

The winter of 2025 to 2026 was a big winter for my hiking.  I started the winter with big ambitions.  Hike 20 peaks and get my winter 46er rocker.  It was doable, I had 2 or 3 weekends more than the number of hikes I needed.  I had high hopes.

I started the day out with high hopes of getting both Cliff and Redfield checked off my list on the last day of winter hiking.  We started off from ADK Loj and it felt weird to be hiking in just microspikes to start the hike.  The hike in to Marcy Dam was the typical quick jaunt.  As we crossed the bridge to the south side, the snow made a subtle but noticeable change from the firm ice to a more slippery slightly deeper and softer snow.  That is when I switched over to snowshoes and they didn't come off until I hit the car at the end of the day.

The last time I went to get these peaks, I had driven through horrible snow and the nerves just got bad enough that my body determined that it wasn't happening that day.  I hiked in to marcy dam and turned around.  This attempt, I came in from upper works.  It was a very wet day, and was predicted to be a wet day with on and off drizzle in the morning and warming temps in the afternoon.  The drive in had a couple spots of black ice, but it wasn't a horrible drive in.  

Well, really Gray, Skylight, and Marcy

We started the day as a group of 13 to get the 3 peaks in one trip.  The NOAA Mountain Point forecast told us that it was going to be very windy in the morning with some snow around noon, but calming down and clearing up later in the day.  With that knowledge, we decided that it was best to go in via Lake Arnold and hit Grey first.  It was the right choice.

We started at the gardens about 630 and the not was about 2/3 full when though the sign at the entrance said it was full. Photos trail into JBL was super highway. Well packed and ready to follow. Crossing over at JBL to ore bed, and ore bed itself to the peak was reasonably packed, a few soft spots, but overall cannot complain at all. The steep sections were not horrible to get up, everything was rather well consolidated, although the trail did go in and out of the trees on the slide section.

February 12, 2026, the rangers were notified around 3 in the afternoon of a hiker and their dog in distress on Marcy. The initial reports are not clear what has happened, other than she slipped off trail near the peak and was hypothermic. The skies were cloudy and it was windy, but they did search by air, and found nothing, while others came in via roads and trails. Rangers were dropped off at the Marcy Dam outpost and reached the woman about 9:50 PM, finding her dead, but her dog alive.

At this point, I have 9 peaks left for my winter 46.  It's soooo close, I can almost taste it.  The problem I am going to run into is I have a lot of mountains left that are deep in the woods.  3 of the hikes I need to do are 17 miles or a bit more.  The other 2 are 12.5 and 14 miles.  We have had a lot of snow this year, and the more remote locations, like what I have left, are deep with snow and not many people have gone that way.  But, here are the 5 hikes I have left, roughly the order I'm planning on doing them, and my thoughts/concerns with them.

Today, I, and 3 other brave souls, went up and did the MacIntyre range.  This is one of the harder hikes in the park, even though it's only 10ish miles (per map).  What makes is hard is that you have huge climbs up Wright and Algonquin (both sides) and you have to go over Algonquin 2 times unless you want to do one of the steepest trails in the park and add a fair amount of mileage.... that was not an option as the trail back to Loj is currently closed due to landslides in July.

Yesterday I lead a hike for ADK up Allen.  I don't normally want large groups for winter hikes, they can cause issues with mismatched speeds and such, but knowing that there was feet of snow that likely needed breaking, 11 of us went out to do the hike.