A 60-yr old back-country skier didn't have a PLB, but did have a GPS and HAM radio to call for help and report his location. Glad he was prepared.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14444464

I wish the story had more detail. It would be interesting to know if he was using a 2 meter handheld and if contact was made over a simplex or duplex frequency. I do not always take the time to program in local repeaters when I travel and I wonder how many people actually monitor simplex call frequencies.

Aren't all hand-held HAM radios line-of-sight only?

This article has some more interesting information from the American Radio Relay League:
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2010/02/22/11353/?nc=1

"Priem asked the amateur on the other end of the radio -- Gary Gosney, K6USN-- where he was located. "He said, 'I'm in Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, Boulder County, 120 miles away." Gosney was monitoring a local Colorado Springs UHF frequency that links to the Mountain Amateur Radio Club’s (MARC) 146.82 repeater located in Woodland Park, Colorado.

"When Steve pulled out his radio and started calling for help, he wasn't sure of the frequencies that were programmed into his handheld transceiver," Ryan said. "He started flipping through the memory channels and calling MAYDAY. He told me that he was still unsure how he was communicating with a ham in Colorado Springs from Guinn Mountain. When I informed him of the MARC Woodland Park repeater, he told me that he had never heard of it, so he was perplexed as to why it was programmed in his radio."

"A quick check of the Colorado frequency database revealed two other repeaters in Colorado on that frequency -- and Steve recognized one in Grand Junction. "He told me that he used to travel to Grand Junction and had programmed that repeater into his handheld transceiver years ago," Ryan told the ARRL. "That repeater is more than 150 miles to the west and would be impossible to hit from Guinn Mountain. Coincidently, it is also the frequency of the Woodland Park repeater -- which sometimes has a CTCSS tone required for input -- but fortunately for all on this day, the tone access was turned off, allowing Steve's signal to key up the machine." The path between Woodland Park (about 9000 feet above sea level) and Guinn Mountain (about 11,500 feet above sea level) is about 75 miles. There is a lot of high terrain preventing a direct line-of-site path, so Steve's signal must have been either knife edging or bouncing off of nearby granite."

"The rescue teams coordinated via Amateur Radio, using both simplex and the mountaintop repeaters maintained by Rocky Mountain Ham Radio, the Rocky Mountain Radio League and the Colorado Connection Repeaters."

Very nice group assist on this one!

Sue

A key comment from the ARRL article: "It was very good propagation that allowed the signal to reach Woodland Park from Guinn Mountain -- and is was good luck that someone was listening."

Plus I would add that it was sheer luck that an untoned repeater was on a pair that he had programmed. If you're going to the trouble to take a ham HT with you into a remote area, why not take the time to program in the local repeaters?

That makes sense to me, not being a ham, but what do you think of my theory.

In highly mountainous country, it might be the case that the only paths to
local repeaters are straight into a mountain.

Whereas the path between you, and a distant repeater, might
be an almost straight line or skip path.

My belief is that many of the repeaters in Colorado are
located on the first real mountain in the foothills. This
allows good comm to the PLAINS, and questionable comm to
other areas. If you are behind this North/South row of
repeaters, with a mountain directly to your East, your best
chance is North or South to a distant repeater, in that row.

Please check me on my assumptions, here.

Local repeaters are set up for different purposes. Sometimes range is deliberately limited to avoid conflicts between repeaters. Some are set up to extend the range of hand held or mobile transceivers over a mountain or ridge. So it would be wise to check for the area you are going to. I cannot tell whether your assumptions are valid for Colorado but generally you made a good point.
Here in Germany we can find repeater maps in the internet (printable and some as Google Maps). I printed one on a A5 sheet and laminated it. That does not claim much space and is helpful if I forget to remember to program the frequencies or fail to reach the expected repeaters.

James asked:
Aren't all hand-held HAM radios line-of-sight only?

No. There are a few HF hand-held radios, and HF can bounce.
Hams make homebrew, kits, etc HF radios that are tiny.

An effective antenna may be larger than you prefer though.
Likewise, some use a bigger antenna for uhf/vhf in emergency
situations.

Google on ARS Adventure ham
Google on "flight of the bumble bees" ham

Some folks don't check every piece of equipment inside and out for every trip.
I haven't used my 2m HT in many, many years and haven't looked at it's programming in a lot longer so this fluke of old programming could be me (if I had the radio with me).

I'm glad it worked for him.

Mostly right but not completely. Sometimes a ham or club in a mountain valley will put up their own repeater. Estes Park has its own repeater (for instance).
There probably would be a repeater serving North Park (Walden area) and so on.

I found the Estes Park machine useful one year on a monster dayhike:
http://estes.on-line.com/rmnp/reports/HighDivide.html

Edit- I just found that Livermore, an area I've been and plan to do hiking has a listing. I'll have to see if my radio will be of any use next time I go.