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Equipped with only 19 pounds of gear, 89-year-old Bing Olbum set off on what he intended to be a five–day hiking trip.

Instead, Olbum found himself stranded for nearly 10 days in over 4 million acres of Salmon-Challis National Forest. It’s home to some of the most rugged places in the country beyond Alaska, according to a local search and rescue coordinator.

Some of the peaks and saddles Olbum passed through reached over 8,000 feet as he cleared more than 20 miles while traversing the alpine forest.

“The odds of anybody surviving that period of time out in the wilderness area is very unlikely,” said Custer County Search and Rescue Coordinator Lincoln Zollinger.

On August 1, Olbum ventured from the Hunter Creek Trailhead in east-central Idaho on a backpacking trip. He was expected to arrive at his exit point in the McDonald Creek Area five days later, according to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office.

Olbum was reported as a missing person days later on August 6, the sheriff’s office said.

The Custer County Search and Rescue team began searching for him by land and air. Ground teams scanned the forest for traces of Olbum, lasering in on possible trails on which he could be found.

The next morning, the Idaho National Guard and a private pilot lent their helicopters to help with the search, and the Idaho National Laboratory manned drones to sweep through the forested mountains for signs of Olbum.

Despite the extensive effort, the Custer County Search and Rescue team “had zero traces of him for the five days” they had been looking, Zollinger said.

Local residents of Custer County and the surrounding area made up the ground search teams.

Locals left their jobs and commitments to help with the search for Olbum, as the Custer County Search and Rescue team is entirely made up of volunteers, according to Zollinger.

“We’re still a really small community,” Zollinger said, adding that he and others have spent their whole lives here. “They say, ‘stay off the mountain,’ well we’re going anyways.”

And it was these community members who finally brought Olbum home.

“We were getting ready to discontinue our search and turn it back over to the family to let them look for (him),” Zollinger said, adding that the chances of survivability were low after being out there for so long.

Olbum’s daughter, Jennifer Olbum, posted his photo and trail map on Facebook Thursday asking for information and help from hikers familiar with the area.

“For two days search and rescue have been unable to locate him which tells me he is hurt or worse and unable to lay out a tarp for the choppers to see,” she wrote.

Two days later, on the final evening of the search, a group of local rescuers discovered Olbum’s camp, according to the sheriff’s office.

After searching for Olbum in the surrounding areas, local residents on horseback found him safe in the early morning hours of August 11.

According to Zollinger, Olbum was found virtually unscathed and was only mildly dehydrated and sore from the sheer distance he covered on foot.

That morning, the Custer County Sheriff’s Office praised Olbum, saying his “will to survive has resulted in an unbelievably good ending to this incident” in a post on Facebook.

Olbum had lightly packed for his backpacking trip. His only food for the excursion was beef jerky, salted nuts and iodine tablets to purify water, according to Zollinger. He also packed a one-man tent, a blanket and a pad to sleep on.

He did not have any tracking devices on him and only had a compass and a paper map for navigation.

I don’t recommend hiking the bush in Idaho without a large bore handgun, which based on his light loadout, I’m willing to bet he didn’t have.

I also don’t recommend going into the deep bush with an ultralight loadout. Freeze dried food would have been very light.

Finally, hiking in the bush without a tracking device is bold. Probably too bold for me. I don’t recommend it.