Local story about a couple who went out to photograph horses and got snowed in for 10 days. Yes they did a couple of things "wrong" but they did a lot of things right.

Short read here

Video here with some info that has been discussed on this forum before.

Sorry I could not provide a direct link to the video but it is current listed as "Full Press Conference, part 1"

Hope it is useful.

I was sorry to hear about Leroy Davenport. The SAR who died in his sleep. He will, I think, be sorely missed.

That's one thing that always is in the back of my mind when I go out to have fun...one mistake and I could be the cause of so much heartache and death. I hope I'm never the cause of that.

Props to the couple though. Besides not leaving an itinerary and lack of comms (cell phone?) they did quite well with what they had...and survived!

I would concur that since they got out of a rather remote area without much damage they certainly did more right than wrong.

"The area is pretty much a desert wilderness, although it's not completely uninhabited. There are some homes, but they are few and very far between. Some dirt roads get a bit of ranching traffic. But on some of those roads, especially in the winter, you can sit on a road a long time without ever seeing another car."

I like the snowshoe idea, it worked well for them. I was out in the woods for the last two days and one of the things I was playing with were improvised snowshoes that are very quick to make. We worked with evergreen bows that seem to functions best. They need a bit of a frame made of willow or young birch. More testing before we know if they would work in all types of snow and how quickly they can be made.

"Don't make the Decision to Survive to late"

There is typically NO cell coverage in that area, just a whole lot of the middle of no where. I had to go into that area once about 5 or 6 years ago for work. I went in from the north (they came from the south) and my car broke down. I had watched the cell phone coverage end 20 miles earlier. I threw some water in my pack and started walking back toward the highway and within 10 minutes was picked up by 2 AP reporters who had been out in the area covering a wildfire. They drove me back to town. I was there in July, fortunately it was an unusually cool day, and I had 5+ gallons of water and 3 days of food with me in the car, just in case. Of course, because I was prepared my rescue occurred within 30 minutes.

Interesting thing is that I called our "roadside assistance" provider so I could get a tow truck to retrieve the vehicle so that I could get my belongings back with me at the motel. The guy asked me where the car was and I told him "it was on a dirt road about 20 miles north of Lund". He replied that he needed the exact address where the car was. I asked him where he was and he said New Jersey. I tried to explain to him the remoteness of western Utah and that there was no "exact address" but he had a hard time understanding that concept.

No surprise to me that it took nearly 2 weeks for them to be found being familiar with the lay of the land in that area. Seems like they could have signaled a little better to assist the rescuers. They said that they saw search aircraft flying overhead - seems like lighting a tire on fire or ripping off the rear view mirror and flashing the aircraft would have been in order. Probably could have stomped a big "SOS" or "HELP" into the snow too. A local TV station flew over their truck yesterday and it looked like they did none of that kind of stuff.