Hiker dies from heat while hiking Palm Springs Trail 6/29/15

[halhiker]

Another sad casualty from hiking unprepared in the desert's summer heat. I feel deeply for their friends and family.

http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/201 ... /29483783/

[Florian]

I almost hiked the South Lykken this morning but hiked the Garstin trail instead. Wish i had hiked the Lykken. I would have been there at the same time and might have been able to help them. Sad.

-Florian

[Sally]

Very sad. I did errands in my home town of Temecula today and felt close to collapsing when I got home. I can't imagine hiking in this kind of heat.

[cynthia23]

How terrible! What an awful tragedy. I see these kind of folks all the time as I'm coming down the trail--not people necessarily attempting to do Skyline, but out of town tourists trying to do the Desert Museum and Ramon loop, or the S. Lykken loop, but starting out at 9 a.m. in the morning. They honestly think they're getting an 'early' start. The trails really need to have CLEAR, explicit statements that hiking in the summer months is DANGEROUS even for short distances. IMHO the local authorities (the paper, the trailhead boards, perhaps the hoteliers) avoid making statements that are explicitly negative about summertime hiking because "God forbid you should ever say anything negative about a local tourist attraction." For instance, the Desert Sun, after every tragedy, will publish a bland statement that 'hikers should be prepared with water, cell phone, etc." But what they really need to say is that during the summer months, people simply shouldn't hike. (obviously, I and other locals continue to do so, but I understand the need to be down by 8.30 at the latest. But understanding how far/long it's safe to hike in the summer here is probably too complex to explain to casual tourists. It's simpler and safer to just advise them to not hike during the summer.)

What a needless tragedy.

[bluerail]

Just very very very sad

[climbant]

Very sad, but also very dumb move. I don't mean to be insensitive but what are they thinking.

[zippetydude]

Well, they probably had no idea how fast the heat can get to you. Even having plenty of experience with desert heat, I would have thought it would be a bad idea, potentially requiring a rescue, but I wouldn't have anticipated an actual fatality. Such a tragic ending to what might have been just a fun vacation in someplace new and very different from home. It's a shame that the difference also held very real danger.

z

[Hikin_Jim]

I only know about heat through hard experience and the experience of others. In Scotland, perhaps they had never experienced something like this. Dang shame.

HJ

[cynthia23]

It's a somewhat puzzling story because I can't quite understand what they were doing for three hours. I mean, on the south Lykken, you go up one end or the other, i.e. either the Murray Canyon end, or the Mesquite end, which normally takes about twenty five to thirty minutes (well, that's how long it takes me ) and then you traverse the rolling terrain between the two, which takes (me) about another forty minutes, and then you go down, or turn around and go back. The story said the SAR people hiked thirty five minutes to get to them, so I wonder where exactly on this hike they were. Surely they were somewhat past the picnic tables on top of the Murray side.

re: climbant's point--I understand his frustration/incredulity--you'd think after about thirty minutes they'd figure out they needed to turn around and go down--but OTOH, I remember when I first started hiking here about ten years ago, I repeatedly did the Desert Museum trail in July at 10 am. I was so dumb I didn't understand why I would have headaches and cramping the rest of the day. It took me a month or two to grasp that it wasn't a good idea and stop doing that, and actually almost a year before I started to recognize the bodily signs of approaching heat stress (and to stop when I felt them.) Being from Scotland, they'd probably never experienced heat like that and had no ability to recognize their bodily symptoms were signaling danger. Also it may have been one of those situations where one person was really set on completing the hike (probably the husband), the other wanted to return, and it became a point of contention.

Whatever happened, it's horribly sad.

[Ed]

I mentioned this to a Scottish friend who lives in Berkeley. He thought it was probably more than the heat, which I am inclined to believe. He and his wife, also Scottish, recently went hiking around Bend in Oregon. It turned out to be around 100 degrees, they were unprepared, and turned back after a while. That's the more typical result of hiking a short trail in the heat.