If you're going to take your vehicle into the desert, you need a few cans of fix-o-flat, real, ankle supporting hiking boots, balloons and 3x the water and electrolytes you think you need. You also need more fat and carbs than protein, which takes water to digest, so easy on the jerky and don't forget the roll of peppermint lifesavers. IF you are stranded with flat tires, realize your life is on the line. It's better to 'travel with shelter' by staying in your car on the road and ruining your rims driving on flat tires to get closer to civilization than to try to hoof it out. Your life is more important than new rims or a paint job. Carry balloons. From the air, neon Red or neon orange will stand against the tans of the desert.
Any other suggestions for desert survival for dummies?
Death Valley has a business that rents 4 wheel drive vehicles. They are equipped with the ability to call for help in case of emergencies. Some of the dirt roads can be very rough on tires.
I would suggest anyone contemplating an off-road camping trip to Death Valley to seriously consider such alternatives as: municipal parks, parish picnics, resort hotels, etc.
Regards,
Thanks for those tips. I’ve been considering purchasing 40 acres in the Mojave, and I could easily become the next victim due to lack of knowledge.
I took a science class in college once that required camping trips throughout CA because I wanted to be out of my comfort zone. By far Death Valley was my favorite place.
Yes I’d love to go back but...yeah I guess it’s way too risky to only go with one vehicle and one other person?
Oh and my experience of Death Valley was in the winter. When the little pupfish swim through the puddles and streams! Such a fascinating phenomenon and clearly not all year.
Lighten? Any kin to Zoe?
If you have to walk out, do it during the night. Find shade to rest under during the day.
1. Let someone know where you're going and tell them to alert the authorities if you don't check back in by a certain time. It helps if you know the authorities number and give it to the people who are your lifeline. First check the number to see if it's good. The day you start your trip tell the authorities where you're going as well
2. Don't depend on Cellphones - plenty of deadspace
3. Don't deviate from your planned and coordinated route
4. Signal equipment, pin flares, strobes, mirrors.
5. Everything the first poster said about water, boots fix a flat ....is good advice. Loose flowing clothes (cotton, it breathes better. Blankets or jackets - gets very cold at night.
6. Extra spare if you can manage it. sandladders for if you get stuck. At least one sturdy D-handle shovel. Tarps and poles for shade
7. Know where you are when you're out there. if you're more than 10 miles walk from the nearest known civilization when you get stuck it's probably best to wait by the vehicle.
If you try to walk out follow the trail, road you came down. Unless you're a very experienced desert navigator do not try to go overland
The key thing though is let someone know when you're out there, where you're going and when you're supposed to be back and what's the drop dead time they should call the cavalry if they don't hear from you
Bottom Line: This is one of the most hostile environments on earth, easily as hostile as the Saudi empty quarter (I've been to both). It will kill you pretty quickly if you're unprepared.
Hope this helps
There is even a place with some great cabins that one can stay in, but I won't say where.
Once we worked our way up Goler Wash from Ballarat, but had to stop because of what looked to be a manmade large step in the road aimed at preventing further travel. Fortunately there was a cabin right before the step that we stayed in. Back then we didn't worry about the Hantavirus that the mice and rats might have been tracking in and out of the cabin while we slept.
The next day we were able to hike to the Manson Family Ranch. Even after all those years it still had a pall about it.
Everyone I have taken to Death Valley has been delightfully surprised. I got to go there when they had the flooding and the water around Badwater was deep enough for kayakers. The wildflowers that year were spectacular.
I've stayed at the Furnace Creek Inn (when it was only unreasonably expensive) but have yet to play the golf course. Something to look forward to.
On one trip we travelled very close to where the couple got stranded. We had no trouble in that area, but then we stuck to the dirt roads, we had maps, we drove conservatively, and we were in constant communication with walkie talkies. Whenever we got to a tough spot, we got out and explored on foot rather than try to blunder our cars and trucks through.
Stay with the vehicle. Shelter in the shade during the day. Sleep in the vehicle at night. Conserve your water. Stay together. These unfortunate people may have been experienced campers, but it eems they violated all of these rules.
Three things...
The guy is a democRat, clear evidence of mental deficiency.
A Subaru Forester is not a serious off-road vehicle.
Death Valley got that name for a reason.
Personal locator beacons are around 200 bucks. Pop the satellite antenna, press the distress button. Wait for the SAR to arrive. There’s no excuse these days. You can even rent them.
This reminds me of the story I read over at Chaos Manor over 22 years ago...
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosreports/deathvalley.html
Saturday, November 21, 1998
I’m alive.
That may not sound like a lot but when you see the pictures of the Bronco you’ll see why I find it a minor miracle. I lost a tire at 35 or so on a desert road in Death Valley. There’s a berm—a steep embankment made of the material thrown up when they graded the road— on the side of the road, and I went up that sideways enough to roll, and we rolled at least twice. I came to rest with the truck lying on the driver’s side, on the opposite side of the road and facing 180 degrees from the direction I’d been driving. Doors wouldn’t open. The big glass rear window on the passenger side (now the up side) was broken, and I climbed up out of that. Fast, because the way to find out about a fire is from 40 feet away. I got some wicked cuts on the palms of my hands on the residual of broken glass on that window, but I was out fast.
No fire. No nothing, but I was 23 miles from a paved road in Death Valley National Monument, the lowest place in the United States, and not a popular area in November. It was late afternoon. Clear skies. Wind coming up. It would be very cold. I had plenty of liquids.
I was bleeding like crazy, great drops of blood running down my face. I didn’t feel hurt, and head wounds bleed a lot. I poked around with my fingers and found I didn’t have any great lumps or soft spots on my head, so I tied an old tee shirt around my head to catch the blood and let things clot. It took care of the job, but now I looked like the character in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. Like I’d been in a war. I inspected for other injuries. Cuts on my hands from glass in getting out. Nothing else. Amazing.
Found all my stuff, got it out of the truck and made a pile secure against wind. Located all the liquids. Found my glasses on the driver’s window, which was on the ground. Actually they were on the ground, since that window had been open. Found the map.
The Compaq Armada had been on the passenger seat with the Delorme GPS tracking receiver on the dash. I found the Armada in the dirt about 30 feet from the Bronco. It had apparently been thrown clear although how I am not sure. The GPS receiver was torn loose at the port connector — if it had not been screwed into place it might have still been working— and next to the car.
The Armada was working enough that I could see on the screen the exact position on the road where the Delorme GPS tracker had been displaying a vector and became a stationary round ball. I was about 23 miles from the paved road to the south. Over 40 to anything at all in the north. The cell phone was working, in that lights came on, but it wasn’t connected to anything. I had a brief thought about fastening a cellular phone relay to one of the circling vultures. Of course I had no cell phone relay, although I might have caught a buzzard by lying still enough. It would be a neat trick to play on the buzzard. That wasn’t likely to work.
Nothing for it but to hike out, so I did, and it was cold at night, no moon. Of course I was on a road, so I couldn’t get lost. Only I did. Because the truck was on the right side of the road, but 180 degrees from the way I had been headed, I started walking north. I had been headed south and it never came to me that we’d done a 180. I walked almost an hour when I realized I was going north INTO Death Valley. That’s why the sunset was on my left. And stars were rising on my right. Walking into Death Valley.
Not smart. Nothing for it but to turn back, so I didn’t really leave Bronc until 6:30 PM, having wasted two hours of walk. Bah. I left a note at the car in case anyone came along, although no one had in 3 hours and it was clear no one would, and off I went with water and Seven-up bottles and a Microsoft WinHec backpack which I thought had a jacket and sweater in it.
I guess I was more confused than I thought because I discovered that I’d left the jacket and sweater ready to be packed in, but they weren’t in the pack. Instead I had a second polo shirt, a light cotton sleeved shirt, and a pair of pants. And a Boy Scout bandana. For a while I used the spare pants as gloves. I had a plastic bag of the grocery store variety with bottles of 7 up, which I had to carry along.
Eventually I was down to one Seven-up bottle and it was cold and the bag ripped so the bag went on under my shirt for insulation. By then I had on three shirts, to wit: a polo shirt, a light cotton long sleeved shirt, and another polo shirt, in that order. It got colder so the AAA map got wound around my body inside the outer polo shirt, and the trousers went on as a hood with the legs around my neck as a muffler. Not bad. And as John Muir said about staying out on the desert without a fire one night, keep moving. It will keep you warm despite that -450 F radiation environment that sucks heat right out... Of course I did have a hat, and over the hat the trousers as a hood, so I wasn’t naked to the sky.
You get a lot to think about walking in the desert at night. There were no lights at all. There was a loom of light over the mountain to the south, which had to be the town of Baker about 40 miles away. Nothing to do but keep walking. It was cold enough that I didn’t really dare sit down to rest, so for rest I would walk slow ten minutes and hour, then pick up the pace. So about 2:30 AM after 8 hours of walking in the right direction (and 2 in the wrong!) I got to a paved road.
There weren’t any cars. Finally one came. Then half an hour later another. And about twenty minutes after that, another. Nobody would stop, but about 4:30 a big 18 wheeler driven by two Mexicans who spoke very little English stopped, and they took me to Baker, where I shivered my way to the Bun Boy motel. I checked in and called home to tell them I was all right, then called AAA from the room, then got a quick shower so I didn’t look like the walking dead, and about an hour nap. Then the AAA tow truck came. AAA took me back out to get the dead truck and all my luggage and computers. I went back to bed for a couple of hours, and Alex came to Baker to take me home, and here I am.
Needless to say I did not make the Hackers conference where I was supposed to tell about the death of BYTE.
USAA insurance is taking care of everything from here. Kaiser looked at me last night and gave me a big course of anti-biotics and a tetanus shot, but that’s mostly preventive rather than needed. I’ve got multiple bruises and contusions and scrapes, and a good story, and I’ll have some pictures of my poor dead Bronco later on.
Wear your seat belts. They sure saved my life. No air bags so my glasses were not broken either.
Three days later I found I had an infection in my leg, and they put in an IV shunt in my arm, and I have been getting IV infusions of antibiotics. As of December 7 I am still on them, but I feel all right now, and the swelling is about gone; I’ll recover.
I’m fine. Now I have to look for another 4 wheel drive vehicle. Given that I walked away from this one, I’d buy another Bronco II but they don’t make them any more. Probably an Explorer. Something with rear seat windows that open: the one problem with Bronc was that Sasha the Husky insists on sitting with his head out the window, and since the rear windows can’t open in a Bronco II, he ends up in the lap of the passenger. Seventy five pounds of Husky is a bit much. He can be ordered into the back, but then he complains. A lot. So my next truck will have openable rear windows. Explorer is probably going to be it. There’s a great Ford agency here that likes 4-wheel vehicles. But we’ll see. Anyway I am alive.
What I want is a Toyota Land Cruiser, but they are very expensive, costing more than the Mercedes M Class 4 wheel. I’m still dithering. But I’ll find one. Now I have deadlines. Thanks to all who have written to wish me well.
Don’t go.
You can drive slowly and carefully on flats a long way.....I did it 25 miles in the Everglades
I think he must have fallen......
Strange decision making....
Forget Fix-a-Flat. Not reliable. Get plugs and a GOOD compressor.
Don’t have time to type it out now. My Death Valley experience almost killed me. Changed a whole lot about my approach to off-roading.
A satellite communicator of some sort. They have ones that will send a distress signal or even text messages for not a lot of $
My brain trust son got a new truck and took it out for some fun in the sand there. Three flat tires later and out of range of a cell tower, he and his best bud were rescued by three friends with a similar truck and their spare tires. Marines. They made a video of their misfortune. It was hilarious.
Why does the family need a Go Fund Me?
Aren’t staffers covered by insurance for federal emoloyees?