Inexperienced people unfamiliar with the extremes of weather in remote areas of the Rocky Mountains die every year. A friend of mine in search and rescue has carried out many a body. Please - if you have no idea what the interior West is all about - don't start riding out West in the winter. From October to April there can be blizzards with 20, 40, 60 below wind chill, zero visibility, and no possibility of rescue until the storm abates. Yes, there can be lovely interludes, but you must understand the whole picture. I suspect that you do not. The overall tone of your post suggests that you have little understanding of the Intermountain West. Please rethink.
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During 1999--2002, a total of 4,607 death certificates in the United States had hypothermia-related diagnoses listed as the underlying cause of death or nature of injury leading to the underlying cause of death (annual incidence: four per 1,000,000 population). Exposure to excessive natural cold (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision [ICD-10] code X31) was the underlying cause in 2,622 deaths. Hypothermia (ICD-10 code T68) was the nature of injury in 1,985 deaths with underlying causes of death other than exposure to excessive natural cold (e.g. falls, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, or drowning).
During 1999--2002, among those who died from hypothermia, 49% were aged >65 years, 67% were male, and 22% were married (compared with 52% of the overall U.S. population) (2). A high proportion (83%) of the hypothermia-related deaths occurred during October--March (Figure 1); these deaths occurred in all 50 states during 1999--2002 (range: four to 288 deaths per state), with the highest average annual rates per 100,000 population in Alaska (4.64), Montana (1.58), Wyoming (1.57), and New Mexico (1.30) (Figure 2). Most deaths were not work related (63%); 23% of affected persons were at home when they became hypothermic.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5510a5.htm