Good article and the findings pretty much accord with my experience. There is no discussion of the relative percentage of day hikers vs multi day/over night backpackers in the study group.

The article seemstofocus on hikers who lost the trail they were following, but many of our incidents resulted from injuries suffered on the hike, mostly leg fractures or sprains. I suspect a lot of folks with arm injuries self extricated.

I do take exception to this one statement:

"Search and rescue teams don’t want to create “an incident within an incident” by sending their team members on an off-trail search at dark or near dark. The standard protocol is to wait until morning."

Not in southern Arizona!! We went out immediately,looking at the most probable areas first, which were often canyons and stream beds with no trails.

I have fond memories of Christmas day, 1983, when my SAR partner and I started searching, immediately off trail, as night was falling and a storm was approaching. It rained/snowed on us all night, but we found the young lady we were searching for at daylight, about a good hour from the nearest trail. Lots of other examples....