Posted on 08/07/2015 3:07:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Like that European athlete who died hiking in astronomical Death Valley heat.
I remember going to DEAD HORSE POINT back in 1955. Dad’s old car would boil over so the ONLY extra water we had was a gallon brown glass bleach bottle full of water. No paved roads. No trails. No services.
If or car had stalled we might still be there today our bones bleaching in the sun.
Quite a bit different when I was again there a couple of weeks ago.
When I went to Aztec National Monument in New Mexico, the rangers encouraged everyone to drink extra water as it was hot and dry, 95 degrees, 12% humidity. Nice. It was hot but nothing like NE Oklahoma and NW Arkansas when I got home. Same temperature, but the humidity made it feel like 108 or higher!
Right now we are under heat warnings. Makes me with I was back in Utah.
Wasn’t it just a week or two ago some French pundit was making fun of Americans for our love of air conditioning?
Later in the late 70's my wife, who was also in the Air Force, was stationed at Kirkland AFB, in Albuquerque. I was a long-distance runner and I ran the La Luz Trail Run race twice while we were there. Switchback after never-ending switchback, straight up the side the Sandias to to the crest at 10,678 feet. It is over an 4000 feet rise in elevation from the bottom to the top. The first year I ran it, it was 7.9 miles long and the next year it was lengthened to 9 miles. It was the most brutal race I have ever run in my long-distance running career. Even worse than the Pikes Peak Marathon in Colorado. I got the luxury of running it those two years when Al Waquie ran it in record time. He was a Jemez Indian who worked at 10,000 foot level in northern New Mexico as a park ranger, so he had the innate conditioning. I remember when I met him, he was very small, slight and all legs and lungs. Later, he held the record for the race up to the top of the Empire State building in the stairwell. He was a phenomenal runner. Great memories.
But the deserts can be brutally hot and in the winter, brutally cold. But it is dry. I live in Florida now and I don't think I will ever get used to the humidity here.
Nope... that was some prof from Cambridge...
I hear ya. I’ve been in Big Bend NP when it was 104 degF along the Old Ore Road in the afternoon, and very cool at night. And that was like in February.
I’m fortunate that the heat normally does not hurt me real bad, but I did a 65-mile bike rally a month or so ago and it took me two days to pee normally again. Sometimes dehydration is way more severe than a person realizes. And it can happen when a lot quicker than that person might have any idea about. I was prepared, I thought, must have drank at least a gallon and a half during the ride.
Sounds like my whole dying in the desert fear is not paranoid at all!
I remember a Freeper once saying that she (at least I thought she was a sister freeper) saying that they call New Mexico the Land of Enchantment, but you need to know that enchantment means “dust”.
I always LOL about that.
Why do you think the child survived and the adults perished? Of course from the article it’s very unclear, I suppose they could have been grandparents of the child even. And I keep saying “child” but of course that could be anyone up to age 18.
That won’t happen now. They have a visitors center at DHP and they charge you $8 to get in. LOL!
I took my gps with me when I got out for a brief hike with my daughter. (I had been there before.). We walked three for four dunes out of the lot. I stopped and asked my daughter where the car was parked. She had no idea.
It is so easy to get lost in the desert.
How about anywhere in the Southwest in summer? I've visited that place, but it was in the fall when things were a lot cooler. I can't imagine anybody thinking it would be a good idea to go for a long hike in that weather in that territory.
This tragedy reminds me of that German family who tried to drive through Death Valley in the summer. Their car was found, but their skeletal remains weren't found until much later. The whole family dead. I guess foreign tourists need to be extra warned about touring the American Southwest during the summer.
ha, ha, that probably gives away your age. A staple plot of many old tv shows when I was growing up was cowboys or whomever stranded in the desert with no water. Another fear was the quicksand that was EVERYWHERE!!! That scared me more than the desert.
I actually love to drive through the desert with the wife on trips. I love the Southwest. It does get hot though.
These areas of the southwest can be very hard on the body, and deceptive so that a person doesn't realize they are in trouble until it is well past time to do something. In the heat and dryness your body can be sweating profusely, yet evaporating so fast that you think it is not that hot. A person can lose a lot of water thinking that they are not sweating at all and that everything is ok. Then the symptoms of dehydration and heat stroke take over quickly.
It's the wife's and my favorite NP. We also love Arches. But we usually go in the fall and only do fairly short walks.
Try hiking in humid weather out here on the East coast. Humidity is a bitch.
Apparently they were late to being parents and according to reports, the child survived because they gave it more water then they drank.
“Try hiking in humid weather out here on the East coast. Humidity is a bitch.”
Just working around the property and coming back inside on a full day’s projects I’ll go through five soaked tee shirts.
It truly is, but what the others are saying is also true. Here on the East Coast if it's 100 degrees and 90% humidity, you know right away there's a problem. Out in Arizona and New Mexico it can be 100 or more and no humidity. You feel the heat, sort of, but it's not that uncomfortable. What you don't feel right away is that with every breath you are drying up, and quickly. All of the sudden you in real trouble, you are not sure how it happened, and if you are even a 1/4 from your car it may be too far.
OTOH, the worst heat I ever felt was in Ponce PR in July. It was hot, bone dry, and I was being baked by the sun directly overhead. It felt like I was walking around under the red hot coils in a toaster oven.
I hear you. The Atlantic Ocean is about eight miles due east of my back door any anybody who says ‘’It’s cooler at the shore’’ is nuts. Most days here in the summer it’s 85 degrees by 10 in the morning and the humidity is about the same. By noon the temp and humidity is well over 90 degrees. Just takes the starch right out of you.
That is just so sad, but they did good taking care of their child.
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