Remember Lily Tomlin's hilarious routine "Is this the party to whom I am speaking????". Even if the accuracy of the system is degraded by fewer towers, it is still ahead of the practices of twenty or so years ago. We had a search in the Rincons for an overdue lady about 1983 or so. All we knew was that she was overdue, and that the ranger staff at SAGU was concerned about the adequacy of her equipment. We had teams all over the Rincons; my partner and I were inserted somewhere around Cow Head Saddle and others were blundering around the entire park, including a team near Rincon Peak. The lady was just fine, having exited the range without having made contact with anyone, but at least I got a nice helo ride and hike out of the effort - some report or another was moderately delayed - what a shame!

The point is that many operations now are much more highly focused and effective.