Both times, it appears the men, Ryan Gibson, 29, and Keegan Pertu, 30, were in over their heads and physically unable to exit the steep drainage on their own.

“They should’ve never been in there.” Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr told the Jackson Hole Daily on Thursday.

Snowmobiles, like all motorized equipment, are illegal in wilderness areas under the 1964 Wilderness Act. Jason Wilmot, a wildlife biologist for Bridger-Teton, said the wilderness boundary is “crystal clear” and has been in place for decades.

“People should know better,” he said. “We are very clear and very consistent in sharing the rules of wilderness travel.”

Still, Wilmot didn’t think the snowmobilers were intentionally breaking the law.

“I think they didn’t understand,” he said of the two Michigan visitors, who were both issued citations.

Anthony Stevens was part of the Search and Rescue short-haul crew that responded around 4 p.m. Sunday. Three days later, he was incident commander for the second crew that air-rescued the two men.

“They were clearly not going to get out on their own,” Stevens said, describing the difficulties of trudging through the current wet, dense snowpack.

Wilmot said he worked closely with the two “apologetic” men after their first rescue and gave them permits to snowshoe back into the wilderness area, because their chartered helicopter needed a ground crew to help lift the sleds out of the drainage.

“We were working with them as best we could,” Wilmot said. “We collectively were convinced this was the best way to honor the rules in place.”

It took Gibson and Pertu two hours to hike downhill to their sleds, which the helicopter successfully rescued.

But with evening quickly approaching, there was little hope they would make it back out by dark, so Search and Rescue dispatched the second crew.

It was “totally disappointing and surprising” that the two men got stuck again, Wilmot said, but ultimately it was their responsibility to retrieve their property.

Search and Rescue saved snowmobilers from the same drainage in 2019. Those riders, who were forced to spend the night on Angle Mountain, were also cited by Bridger-Teton National Forest rangers for snowmobiling in a wilderness area.