Man found dead from apparent heat illness

[netllama]

Bad luck & bad judgement are often deadly

https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/fata...3-2023.htm

[trailhound]

Was this guy drinking water or sports drink? Probably not. The relative humidity that day was under 20%. Pour some water over your head and on your clothes.  Evaporative cooling will have you freezing soon enough.

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.

[MojaveGeek]

Well all of us here would know better than some random person... I wonder where this was on the North Rd because if anywhere north of the Beatty Rd, the person was just sight seeing? Certainly not skilled enough to head out on any of the dirt roads, and I think you still can't exit the park on the Bonnie Claire Rd? Or maybe that is open.

But damn, if you're feeling the heat, water / civilization was to the south. Well actually we can't tell from the report which way the person was driving.

On a related note, the last time I was there someone was camping on the flats north / west of the pull out with the rest area near the Beatty Rd - in fact one occupant came over to use the outhouse while we were there. We called it in via 911 - which got into park dispatch - and a friend who came by 15 minutes later and had the DVNP newspaper called it directly in to park law enforcement, but we saw no evidence of any response. Pretty lame, unless there was some big accident some place at the time.

[DAW89446]

I suppose, with those temps, that heat exhaustion caused confusion thus might be a factor in his direction of travel. The Bishop news and DVNP press release seemed to allude to flat tires being caused when the car left the road.

Back in the mid 1980s, I had the misfortune to cross Death Valley in July, in the late morning, Beatty to Trona, with my wife and three kids in a black 4-door hatchback with non-working AC. I didn’t have any means to check outside temperature, but I doubt temps were more than 110 or so on the valley floor. Still, it gave us a healthy respect for what heat does to us.