No, they knew. I asked them about it myself. These guys did the Lewis & Clark trail three or four years ago. They got their maps for both trips from Adventure Cycling, who I know provides lots of great planning information. This is a more challenging trip than they've done before (and the latest report is that they're doing fine but behind schedule, and already shipped a bunch of stuff back that suddenly seemed unnecessary when they had to pull it on rough trails ) - but they're not in the least inexperienced.

They just wanted to "cut off electronic tethers." Or save a little money, honestly I don't know what their motivation was for foregoing satellite communications, but I just think it's very irresponsible.