For nearly a week, investigators in Northern California have been searching for a family of four who vanished during a road trip. Finally, the rain-swollen river where the rescuers have been focusing their search has given up its first clues, the authorities said.

On Friday morning, searchers located the body of an unidentified adult woman about seven miles north of the reported crash site, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Previously, personal items that were “consistent with a family traveling on vacation” as well as parts from a car that belonged to the missing family had been plucked from the fast-moving waters of the Eel River, which winds through five counties for nearly 200 miles.

“It does confirm the fact the vehicle that was seen going into the river was that of the Thottapilly family,” the California Highway Patrol said late on Thursday.

Conditions in the Eel River, engorged with several days’ worth of rainfall, had hampered the search effort. But its waters may have begun to recede.