Missing father and son found dead

Very sad story...a pair of missing hikers, a father and son, were found dead in Carlsbad Caverns. From the story:

The extraordinary heat wave gripping the western United States has so far been blamed for at least four deaths, authorities said Wednesday.

The bodies of Robert Stuart Pluta, 57, and his son Bobby, 21, of Corpus Christi, Texas, were discovered Monday and Tuesday respectively, in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, where daily high temperatures have topped 100 degrees for almost a week, New Mexico State Police said Wednesday.

The Plutas, both of whom were experienced hikers, had been on a hiking trip since Wednesday of last week but hadn't been heard from since they checked into their hotel, NBC station KRIS of Corpus Christi reported. A parkwide search was launched on Monday.



Apparently they took a father-son trip over Father's Day and had been out of contact for a couple of days. Not a lot of details but presumably lack of water and heat combined to kill them. It's a sad case but a reminder to everyone to be especially careful in extremely hot weather.

Definitely not enough information from which to draw meaningful conclusions.

But when temps get as high as the southwest us is experiencing, it is time to change your normal outdoor patterns

Yeah, we'll probably never get much for details about what went wrong. Did they get lost? Were they undone by a mechanical injury? The bodies were found one day apart so my guess (if I had to guess) that one of them was physically unable to continue and the other attempted to hike out to get help. Deaths on a routine nature outing are always tragic, I just hope that if nothing else we can learn from their story to help others avoid such a fate.

I'm a woods kind of guy. I'd be a fish out of water in the desert. So I'd probably carry as much water as I could manage. Still if you got seriously turned around and lost the water would go pretty fast.

So sad!!!!!!!

Personal Locator Beacon, $250, provides rescue just about anywhere on the planet.

Then again, they may not have even survived until rescue came.

Sigh

You probably don't even need the $250 in the United States, and definitely not in a National Park. Also helpful is a good map, signalling devices, and plenty of water or nowledge of a good source,,,