This is surprisingly common - a combination of target fixation and that hope that things will get better "just around the corner". People seem to be wired to push ahead instead of turn back and look for an easier route. I suppose a lot of exploration and discovery wouldn't have happened otherwise but then it's tempered by the numerous stories like the OP.
It's an old problem too. I vaguely remember seeing a driver training video made before I was born, warning drivers not to explore random "shortcut" dirt roads on their paper maps.
I've done this sort of thing before manually routing based on OSM maps.
A friend of mine and I rented a AWD vehicle to be able to drive on the "F roads" in the internal part of Iceland, which is beautiful but very desolate. (I'd be surprised if the inspiration for Mordor didn't come from some places Iceland in fact.) I had downloaded the OSM maps on my tablet and was just manually plotting routes that looked like they could be interesting.
It was great fun, but it sort of turns out that there are F roads and there are F roads. Some of the roads are fairly flat, easy to pick out, and you see a car at least once every hour. Some of the roads... well, one road went steeply up, then without warning into what was basically a giant sand bowl half a mile in diameter. We were in the "bowl", with sand who knows how deep (deep enough that the car had trouble making forward progress) before we knew what was happening. In the middle of nowhere, with no cell signal and not having seen anyone for hours.
Thankfully, by turning around and just keeping the accelerator on, we were able to build up enough momentum to get back over the ridge by which we'd come in; but it was definitely a close shave.
I could imagine the same story as TFA happening with OSM maps.
In openstreetmap, tracks should get additional tags such as tracktype, surface, smoothness.
If such tags are present and seem to be reliable, then OSM can be used to plan trips. Otherwise it is just too risky to rely on OSM. In particular in harsh climates and if there is no way to get help.
I.e., before using OSM, assess the quality of the mapping done by the local community. Anyone can draw lines of a map by looking at satelite images. It doesn't mean that such lines are passable.
That wouldn't necessarily help in the given example. Desert stream beds often look very similar to roads on satellite and furthermore, data rates are abysmal in most of these places. You frequently can't load much beyond the cached basemap to check.
You can check the road surface, see the surrounding terrain, check for any signs or intersections or proximity to structures, etc. At the very least, you should zoom out enough to check that your path actually ends up going to your destination.
If you don't have data access then Google Maps routing won't help much either. It all comes down to offline/hard maps, situational awareness, and basic wayfinding to get through these areas safely.
As for the data issue, Google maps (by default?) caches the turn-by-turn directions when you start navigation. Spotty cell service isn't really a problem until you make a wrong turn.
Like I said, if you zoom out then you can clearly see the actual "Ice Caves" road #53 with lane markings, and a smaller "Ice Cave" dirt road that ends near that group of buildings. Everything after that is just dirt, no roads at all regardless of what Google says, which is my point.
Zoom out, assess the terrain, look for markings, check for buildings, and compare paths to the destination. Unless you're visiting the bottom of the crater there, you shouldn't ever be going off that main highway.
The map tiles should also cached (how else would it show you the turns?) but yes offline/paper maps are a must when going into unfamiliar areas.
The area is actually full of ice caves and native sites that Google will send you on those dirt roads to get to. Also, regardless of what preparations people ought to do, there's going to people who rely solely on one method without backups. It should be robust to that.
I’ve been on legit roads in the middle of nowhere and not seeing marking or roads doesn’t mean anything (western USA problems).
That said I do think people should carry a $15 paper map booklet if they plan on venturing outside the city. I both have offline maps of the whole US and paper maps in my car, but I also do this a lot.