Sagebrush Naturalist's points are good advice: more water is always a good thing. Letting people know your plans is good and she did that, but then didn't follow through by being there because she got lost.Not knowing which GPS she had, it's easy to believe the GPS wasn't all that useful off-road. Unless the road you're on is in the maps database, you are off road from a GPS POV.

GPS units have varying levels of detail depending on how much area it's covering (zoom in/out) and system settings. . . and the maps that are loaded need to be appropriate. My Nuvi 760 does a great job on the road, but off road it tends to not be very useful. The GPSMAP 60CSx OTOH doesn't have some features I like for the road, but it's loaded with street and Topo maps for where I am now. Zoom in enough and detail starts to show -- great for hiking, not so much for driving.

When you're out and about in places like Death Valley, back-ups to back-ups are the way to go. Dual GPS with extra batteries for the walking unit, as well as map and compass with points of reference highlighted on the map. If I was unfamiliar I'd mark GPS waypoints along the way with corresponding marks on the map, preflighting the navigation so to speak. GoogleEarth is used in the process just to see what I should expect.

You guys have a lot of good insight - most of the suggestions on this post are good. Its too bad that most of the people going on these sorts of trips don't get a chance to read or talk with such knowledgeable folks.

A lot of folks surmised that it was her GPS unit that led to her getting lost in the first place – a very good conjecture. I love my GPS unit - I use a laptop hooked up with a basic bluetooth gps logger to read digital USGS topoquad maps on it - I know, its clunky to use as a driving navigation aid, but it has far more off road data than any other type of GPS unit short of using aerial photography as a base map. Even so, this can get someone lost if they treat it as the direction god because it can calculate a route down a dirt road that has been washed out or closed – and it does happen!

I must reiterate the necessity of staying with a vehicle and how that was a smart choice for this woman: the closest paved road from the Owlhead Mountain area where she was lost is due west in the China Lake weapons center, but she would have had to have walked more than 10 miles around a mountain and through several smaller hills and valleys to get to it. Even if she survived sitting out the heat during the day, walking at night would have been diffficult because it was over 100 degrees through most of the nights that week. The area she was in would not be an easy place to walk out of even during nice weather, and sweating 24 hours per day would have used up more than a few gallons of water for a trek like that - they simply didn't have enough water to do it. Unfortunately, the next closest paved road to her was Hwy 127 about 35 miles to the east, so she couldn't be in much of a worse place to be for something like this to have happened.

Staying with a car is about the only choice you would have, unless you can find a better shelter nearby. One can extend their survivability in a desert by hunkering down under their vehicle, digging a depression under there to stay in, and piling sand, suitcases, tarps or rocks and anything else you can along the south, east and west sides to keep out the sun. Since you are not trying to hide, make sure you can be seen too. Open the hood, roll down all the windows (but keep the doors closed to help shade the floor), put out help signs (SOS rocks, etc), and burn a tire when it’s not too windy for smoke (carry highway flares to help start them).

Some smartly mentioned a PLB (personal location beacon) – I use a SPOT messenger. I’m not trying to be a salesperson here, but for those that like to do their own adventures, especially those who like to take children on camping trips and whatnot, these are a very good idea. My 3-yr old daughter knows how to use my SPOT PLB and can call for a helicopter with it if mommy and daddy are hurt. Thank goodness she doesn’t try to play with the thing! I keep it in our car’s accessory glovebox so it is out of reach when we are not traveling. We do take her on offroad campouts, but we always travel with other friends or family for the more rugged adventures or stay on well traveled roads if we are alone.

Anyways, I know that we won’t ever read about someone from a forum like this one having such a tragedy – at least not one where the outcome was a bad one, right?
Cheers - SN

"The nights do not cool off that much down there - it was still over 100 degrees at 11PM!"

A hundred degrees when you're trying to sleep is miserable. A hundred degrees after a 120F day is almost balmy while you're moving, esp once the sun is down.

"The Sun doesn't rise in the east and sets in the west where I live... whistle 3 weeks ago the sun rose in the North East and set in the North West."

If the woman had headed NW, W or SW, she would have hit the highway. If she had followed her own tracks (and I'll bet there weren't any others), she would have hit the highway.

"I figure she left directions for where she intended going and then got lost."

I doubt that. Death Valley is about 110 miles (177 km) from north to south. Scotty's Castle is near the northeast end, Trona is all the way to the south on the west side.

She simply didn't know what she was doing, and shouldn't have been where she was.

Ok – regarding walking out to get help:

Here is a possible way to survive if you were her trying to walk out, but you'd be making some assumptions which may dangerously shorten your water supply. These are coordinates from the intersection where she headed west off of Owl Springs Road and continued down the old jeep trail in the wash towards the west. she got stuck soon after the intersection (NAD83 Lat/Long decimal degrees - just copy/paste these into GoogleEarth): 35.6908°, -116.908°

You can see from this point on GoogleEarth how desolate this location is. Even GoogleEarth shows a neat little road line leading west down the wash from this point that connects to the other dirt roads at China Lake - this road is not there anymore, and I bet her GPS showed it was there too!

Anyway, the automated radar facility about 2.3 miles north at the end of the road from the intersection probably has an alarm if someone tries to break in – it would offer a good possibility for calling for help. Other than that, you can see she was really out there and walking anywhere would have been really bad!

+1 there.
Couple of years ago, I got a call to assist two furniture deliverymen who--following their GPS--drove a 28 foot box truck a mile and a half, down a fire road that was built by the CCC in the thirties, and not maintained much since. It was too rough for a Ford Expedition; I patrolled it on a motorcycle. It took 6 hours with a Kenworth wrecker to get them out. I asked them whatever possessed them to go that way. They said that they were just following the GPS for the shortest route...

ha! Reminds me of the time I took a type-3 ambulance down a fire road (that's the type on a dual-rear wheel carriage and the "box" on the back). I swear I had one tire off the road hanging off the cliff.... and that was on the way IN!

Lots of fun though. Who'd have thought a 12,000 vehicle could do that well? Only other run nearly as fun was driving out onto a pier.

She had pretty intimate knowledge of the path she had just followed (or made). All she had to do was backtrack.

Even with 4WD, if you're unsure of the area in front of you, get out of the da**ed car and check it out on foot!

Forrest Gump was right.

I think there might be something a bit more dangerous at work here than pure stupidity.
The Woman kept on driving long after she should have realized that she was lost instead of stopping.
She should have stopped the first timer she thought it seemed like a long way to the park gate, she should have stopped when she had the flat tire.
She should have stopped when she was getting near a half tank of fuel and she should have stopped before turning down the goat path.
I have no idea what was in her mind when she continued on in spite of it all.
Maybe she was showing determination, refusing to give up, etc...etc...etc.
Maybe she was expecting her destination to be just around the next curve or over the next hill.
Who knows?
I see a lot of people who should know better do the same thing.
Why they do it is beyond my understanding.


...and maybe it was just like Sagebrush and Goo suggest, and she was following (and being misled by) her GPS.

I note that the family dachsund survived five days in Death Valley. Given the heat in Death Valley, I believe that the dog would have perished unless it had water to drink -- which could only have come from the humans. To me, this is interesting in that it reveals some sort of intellectual disconnect in the mom. I cannot conceive of a mother (or father for that matter) giving water to a family pet if she thought there was a possibility that the water would be needed for a child. If this mom is like other moms in this regard (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), then this mom did not understand how dangerous the situation was. Did she expect imminent rescue? Why did she expect imminent rescue? Was she so lost that she did not realize how far away she was from the designated camping location? When did the mom realize how dangerous the situation was? My sympathy and condolences go to the family.

Aaaaah, Kukulkan - I thought about that but wasn't going to go there....but then, I'm vegetarian & fish only.

I really think she got scarred and had a 'damn the torpedos' attitude on where to drive - the road in that area is sandy and difficult for most to drive on, and it wasn't repaired after the 2004 floods. It's also part of the wilderness area - so, if her GPS had a road still going there on it that explains the reason for driving down there in the first place.

It's a very sad thing to have happened to a family, I really hope we can help others by geting the word out in our own way on why this type of thing can be avoided - I'm all for people going on trips to the desert - even safe and sane off-highway road trips with the family in the all-time 4wd urban safari vehicles (yikes!), but really, they can do safe trips on dirt roads (within reason) which will open their eyes to how beutiful open space is out there and then perhaps they will vote on bond issues that help out public lands! What's that? Oh - ok, I'll get off my soap box now, sorry...