""It's a forsaken place,""

No, Mr. Youngerman, it's an extraordinarily beautiful place.

And while preparation, experience and the inclusion of a GPS is laudable, knowing your terrain is essential.

I believe he meant that they are overwhelming. It sounds like his experience lies in Ohio where they call Mull Hills Mountains. So to someone who has never climbed a real mountain I could see it being considered a forsaken place with untold dangers.

With the climate differences and his lack of experience in real mountains his hiking group should have made sure they knew where he was.

Thank God he is safe.

Meta: don't take it personally I'm sure he didn't mean to say it wasn't beautiful. It's good he got out and didn't have to chop off his arm.

Knowing your terrain is part of being prepared.

I'm sure anyone that is lost in the wilderness would say they are in a forsaken place. Antarctica is amazingly beautiful, but if your not prepared id dare say you would call it a forsaken place as well.

The discussion about the High Uintas brings back memories of camping there as a youth....what a thrill. It is indeed a stunning place, unlike any other I've seen. And now I'm hankering to go back. Thanks ya'all.

I think he was referring to Ohio!

Well, a friend and I climbed Kings Peak while doing the entire Highline Trail, and summited the day Youngerman was found. The weather was perfect the entire time. The nights were more like 40F. And Painter Basin is a wide open tundra bowl with two solid trails intersecting between Anderson and Gunsight Pass. I don't know what this guy was doing slogging around in marshes. He had a compass, and one would hope a map, but apparently he couldn't use either of those. So a gps probably wouldn't have helped him much. Sorry, but he was just in way over his head. Almost all search victims are described as experienced....by family and friends. Short story version: Dumb.