On the third day that Stanislav Volo was missing on Mount Habrich, something extraordinary happened. His dead phone came back to life.
The phone had been dead for two days. Stanislav had a battery bank with him, but it too was nearly exhausted. Desperate to get some power into the phone, he knocked it around and bashed it about, hoping somehow it might reconnect. For one brief moment, it did. His phone showed 3% battery.
He used that residual power to call 911 again.
The call connected. He got through to the first 911 operator and was transferred to another emergency operator. Precious time was consumed by the normal routing process. When he finally got through, he managed to communicate only that he “was stuck on the mountain.”
Then his phone died, this time for good.
If you take nothing else from this article, remember this: if your phone is about to die and you may have only seconds of communication left, get your location out immediately.
The moment the 911 call connects, start talking:
“My GPS coordinates are latitude 49… longitude -123… I'm lost in the backcountry. My phone has 1% battery.”
To be extremely clear: this is NOT how we're telling you to make a normal 911 call. If you have a functioning phone and a reliable connection, follow the normal 911 process. Tell the operator whether you need police, fire or ambulance, give them the municipality and answer their questions.
We're talking about an extreme wilderness emergency, like Stanislav's: missing for days, seriously injured with a fractured heel and wrist and a head injury, his phone already dead for two days, suddenly showing 3% battery and briefly reconnecting to the cellular network. He had no idea how long that connection would last. In that situation, you may genuinely have only seconds to communicate.
The wilderness also changes what happens after that call. An RCMP officer isn't going to hike up a mountain to find you, and an ambulance isn't going to drive to the summit. Search and Rescue has to be activated, locate you, reach you and bring you back to the requesting agency or higher care.
That is why, if your last words on that phone are going to be anything, from a Search and Rescue perspective, your location is the single most important piece of information we can get.
In that extreme circumstance, don't spend your remaining seconds waiting to choose police, fire or ambulance. Give your coordinates first. If the connection survives, stop and follow the operator's questions and the normal routing process.
HOW A 911 CALL ACTUALLY WORKS
Most of us don't call 911 regularly, so there's little reason to know what happens until we suddenly need it.
In most of B.C., the first person you reach is an E-Comm 911 Queue Operator. Their job is routing. They will ask whether you need police, fire or ambulance, and confirm the city or municipality where you need assistance. They then transfer you to the appropriate agency, where another call-taker gathers the details of your emergency.
You may have noticed that Search and Rescue isn't one of those options. That's because SAR requires a requesting agency. We respond at the request of police, ambulance or fire and cannot self-deploy — you cannot call us directly and ask us to launch a search or rescue.
For most backcountry SAR calls, you'll therefore be routed through police or ambulance, depending on what's happening. In other circumstances, fire may be the appropriate agency. If you're unsure which service you need, tell the 911 operator what's happening and let them determine where to route you. Once the requesting agency determines SAR is needed, they activate us.
The important thing to understand is that there are two conversations: the initial 911 routing conversation and then the detailed conversation with the emergency agency handling your call. 911 calls are recorded.
NORMAL ROUTING — IF YOU'RE LOST
If you're lost, stranded, overdue or reporting a missing person in the backcountry, ask for POLICE.
Locally, if you're lost in the mountains around Lions Bay, tell the first operator POLICE and LIONS BAY. Lions Bay is served by Squamish RCMP.
This first conversation can feel a little strange when you're standing halfway up a mountain. The operator may ask what municipality you're in when the only answer that makes sense to you is, “I'm on the Howe Sound Crest Trail.”
Remember, their job at this point is routing. Don't assume the first operator knows where the West Lion, Harvey Basin, Magnesia Meadows or a particular hiking trail is. If you don't know the municipality, do your best. Give them the closest town, city or village you know, explain that you're in the backcountry and provide your GPS coordinates.
Getting the location right matters because calls are occasionally routed to the wrong Search and Rescue team. The first team receives the task, starts gathering information and then realizes the incident is actually in another team's response area. The task then has to be passed to the correct team. We've seen that add 30 minutes to a call before the right team is activated. A GPS coordinate helps remove that ambiguity.
Once you're through to police, tell them you're lost in the backcountry and give them your GPS coordinates.
NORMAL ROUTING — IF YOU'RE INJURED
If you're dealing with a serious medical emergency, ask for AMBULANCE. Think a femur fracture, serious fall from height, major bleeding, altered level of consciousness, chest pain or another potentially life-threatening injury.
The ambulance call-taker will ask for your location, a callback number in case the call is disconnected, and a description of what is happening. They may then ask questions such as: Is the patient conscious? Is the patient breathing? Does the patient have chest pain? Is there severe bleeding? These questions are asked in a specific order to help determine the fastest and most appropriate response.
From the SAR side, those answers matter, but remember that we have to get to you first and extract you from the wilderness. Knowing that we're dealing with a severe injury changes our response. It can mean sending our strongest medical resources, including advanced medical members or emergency physicians when available. It also helps us determine whether we can reach you on foot or whether we're looking at an urgent helicopter evacuation.
If you're both lost and injured and aren't sure whether to choose police or ambulance, don't waste time trying to figure out which is the right one. Either can start the emergency response process, and the appropriate agencies can be brought in as needed.
Even if your call starts with police because you're lost, we will assess your medical needs when we reach you and can bring ambulance resources into the response. We will always offer you an ambulance when appropriate. You can decline it.
BEST CASE: YOU HAVE BATTERY
If you have plenty of battery and a decent cellular connection, follow the normal process. Tell the 911 operator police, fire or ambulance, give them the city or municipality, get transferred and answer the questions you're asked.
Once you're speaking with the second call-taker, make it clear that you're in the backcountry and you have GPS coordinates. Give them.
Then answer their questions. A lost-person call and a medical call require different information, which is why the questions will be different.
WORST CASE: YOU HAVE 1–3%
This is the extreme exception we described at the beginning. It does not apply to a normal 911 call, and it does not apply simply because your battery is getting low-ish. We're talking about a remote wilderness emergency where your battery is critically low, the cellular connection is marginal and you have reason to believe the call could disappear at any moment.
You may have only a minute of connection. Your priority is transferring the information that gives rescuers the best chance of finding you before the phone dies.
The call is being recorded. In this extreme scenario, this is not the time to worry about being polite or waiting for the perfect opportunity to speak. If you have to interrupt the operator, interrupt them. You might not even make it through the initial routing call.
Start talking:
“My GPS coordinates are latitude 49… longitude -123… I'm lost in the backcountry. My phone has 1% battery.”
Get the coordinates out. Even if you don't make it through the first routing call, those coordinates can identify where you are and help determine the appropriate jurisdiction, requesting agency, and SAR team.
If you're injured:
“My GPS coordinates are latitude 49… longitude -123… I'm injured — serious fall, possible femur fracture. My phone has 1% battery.”
If you have time, repeat the coordinates. Then follow the operator's questions for as long as the connection survives. If you genuinely believe the phone is seconds from dying, get the critical information onto that recorded call.
YOUR PHONE CANNOT BE “LIVE TRACED” ONCE IT'S DEAD
This is why the coordinates matter so much. A phone that is completely powered off or has a dead battery is no longer communicating with the cellular network. It cannot continue providing an updated live location.
Police may still be able to obtain historical information from its last connection, including the cell tower and sector it connected through and potentially an estimated location generated while the phone was still communicating. But once the phone is dead, that information stops updating.
YOU ALREADY HAVE A GPS
Many people don't hike with Gaia, AllTrails or another mapping app. You SHOULD, but we know not everyone does.
If you have an iPhone, open the Compass app. Your coordinates are displayed near the bottom of the screen.
You might see: 49°42′3″ N, 123°8′56″ W
Read exactly what you see:
“Latitude four-nine degrees, four-two minutes, three seconds NORTH. Longitude one-two-three degrees, eight minutes, five-six seconds WEST.”
Your coordinates may appear in a different format. That's fine. Do not waste time trying to convert them. Give the 911 operator exactly what your device displays. They can pass those coordinates along, and Search and Rescue can convert them into whatever format we need.
ONCE SEARCH AND RESCUE CONTACTS YOU
Once Search and Rescue has been activated, we will try to establish direct contact with you. Take the call. It won't say SAR or No Caller ID - it'll be a real person's name and number; whomever is the SAR manager that day.
If you have a cellular connection, we can send you a text message using an application called Connect Rocket. The text contains a link. When you click that link, it provides us with a GPS location from your phone.
That can turn a search into a direct rescue, potentially saving hours. Instead of trying to determine where you might be across kilometres of wilderness, we have a point on the map and can send rescuers toward it.
Once we know where you are, stay there ***.
***Exception: If you're in imminent danger — avalanche hazard, rockfall, rising water, wildfire, a dangerous animal nearby or another immediate threat — move to safety. If you still have communication, tell rescuers you're moving and provide your new location.
DON'T GET TO 1% !!!
The better strategy is to protect your communications before you ever need them.
1. START FULL AND BRING BACKUP POWER. Leave home with a fully charged phone and a fully charged battery bank. Check your cables. A battery bank with no power remaining isn't backup power. Check it before the trip.
2. CONSERVE YOUR BATTERY. Turn on Low Power Mode. If you don't need a cellular connection while travelling, consider Airplane Mode and periodically turn connectivity back on when appropriate.
Mountainous terrain with intermittent coverage is particularly hard on batteries. When you're travelling through areas with little or marginal service, your phone can continually search for available networks. Meanwhile, background applications, navigation, the screen, camera and other functions are consuming power.
If your phone is also your map, GPS, communication device and emergency lifeline, manage that battery accordingly.
3. KEEP YOUR PHONE WARM. Cold temperatures reduce battery performance and can cause a phone to shut down even when its battery indicator suggests charge remains. Keep it close to your body in an inside pocket rather than exposed in the top of your backpack.
Most importantly, call for help while you still have the ability to call for help. If you know you're lost, seriously injured or in trouble, don't burn through your remaining battery for hours hoping the situation will somehow resolve itself.
Stanislav got one extraordinary opportunity after his phone had been dead for two days. He managed to reconnect to 911 with 3% battery and communicate only that he was stuck on the mountain.
Imagine if that conversation had started with his coordinates instead.
If you ever find yourself with that same tiny window of communication, remember the order: Coordinates first. Tell them you're lost or injured. Tell them your battery is dying.
Those few seconds of information could turn an enormous search area into a point on a map.