I have AT&T and was hunting a Colorado mule deer tag solo this week. I had one reliable spot in the unit with one bar of LTE that I found. All other messages back home were through satellite messaging on my iPhone 14. It worked reliably but you have to be pointing your phone at the satellite and following it to stay connected, kind of a pain. I ran into 3 really nice dudes in my unit Monday night who had informed me of this story and it has been in the back of my mind ever since. After this I will 100% be buying an in-reach or some sort of device as a redundancy.
As many have said, thank god the families have closure. Pray for safety over your fellow hunters. This forum is a great resource, I’ve learned a ton from the folks on here. As sad as this is, hopefully we can learn from this situation as well.