From what I can gather, the pilot only had his private pilot's license. Which is the very first one that you get. The poor weather conditions made flying instrument conditions... meaning that to be flying in it, you should have had an instrument rating, which he did not. The clouds were at 200 feet and visbility was only 1 mile. Not to try and make any conclusions, but seems like it would be very easy for them to have gotten disoriented in a cloud and not known where they were at.