I’ve worked at WSMR in summer. It sure ain’t St. Tropez.
But folks don’t understand how cold it gets in the high desert at night.
The one that usually get folks here near Albuquerque is the La Luz Trail going from the foothills up to Sandia Crest at 10,678 feet. They start off in shorts and a t-shirt and, misjudging the time get stranded in the dark, and even in summer it drops into the 40’s. The number of folks they’ve hauled down suffering from exposure is impressive.
At higher elevations that happens here too.
They take the tram in Palm Springs and have no idea how cold it will get. There was a show “I Survived” or some name like that. They did one about a couple who did just that. Went up on the tram ill prepared, got lost and nearly died.
They found the body of an experienced German hiker who had died a few years before. In his pack were matches in a plastic bag. The one and only thing they did right was set fire to brush. The fire watch saw it and sent a helicopter; otherwise, they would not have made it. They had gone in to a box canyon and could not have climbed out.
I don’t understand what happened to these people, did they just die of heat stroke or something? Were they out there for days? (That seems unlikely). How old is the child?
I state for the record that my greatest TV-inspired fear is dying in the desert. I went to Vegas once and I’d go there again, but I would never live there. I’d be too afraid I’d get car-jacked or something and end up dying in the desert.
But, that assumes some stuff, like getting lost (which believe me I can do going around a city block, well, a suburban “block” anyway), is that what happened here?
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.