Tragic. More details at the link. Their Jeep Cherokee got stuck several miles off a dirt road.

How much water would an adult, child and a dog need to survive for five days in a 100+ degree desert environment?

Don't know what their shade situation was. Guessing it wasn't good. But they had camping gear. Article doesn't say what all the mom tried to do.

What a nightmare for her to lose her little boy (the Dachsund lived).


http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=10867128

Las Vegas Boy Dies After Getting Stranded in Death Valley

Updated: Aug 07, 2009 5:54 PM

An 11-year-old Las Vegas boy died after his mother's car got stuck in sand for five days on their way to Death Valley for a camping trip, officials said Friday.

...got stuck when it drove over an underground coyote den and the soil collapsed

...try to get a cell phone signal but could not,

...The pair had no maps and quickly consumed the 24 16-oz. bottles of water, Pop Tarts and cheese sandwiches they had packed.

A bit more detail here:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/07/us/AP-US-Death-Valley-Fatality.html

Sounds like she was reported missing after failing to report to work (she's a nurse at a Las Vegas hospital).



http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99UAGC01&show_article=1

He said searchers mistakenly looked late Wednesday for Sanchez in campgrounds in the Panamint Mountains, based on family members' reports that she planned to camp in free sites and visit the Scotty's Castle attraction in the far northeast corner of the vast national park.

I feel terrible when I read stories like this about people dying painful deaths. Especially when there is no good reason for them to place themselves in such a situation.

I often think that people have far to much faith in their vehicles, maybe it is the result of to many ads telling them that 4WD vehicles never break down or get stuck.

Sorry, but 4WD cars do get stuck or break down and being stranded in the desert is just as bad as being stranded in a blizzard, maybe worse.

you just nailed it right there.....

So sad. We came across a man and boy walking in the 105 degree
heat in the nearby Saline Valley. They had rented a Ford 4x4 and
had taken it out in the sand dunes and gotten it stuck. Went off
a little dune and became high centered. They were hours of walking from the nearest people.

Shovel and car mat was the key to getting
them out. On that trip we got TWO flat tires.

It may be wise to caravan with others in that country.

As a rule, I very rarely go far off-road with a vehicle unless I'm traveling with at least one other vehicle. Be that my snowmobiles or my 4x4's.

I've been in way too many situations where a tow or a ride became necessary.



With that being the case, I've even been in situations like that on-road as well. Had the drive shaft break (and the pinion get stuck) in my K5 Blazer right in the middle of the road, in winter, with no tow truck able to help for at least 2 hours. Ended up having to get a ride home, get my Envoy, and use the Envoy and chains to drag the Blazer out of the middle of the road. 4Lo came in handy that day, dragged the dead weight of a K5 blazer on 40" tires no problem.

Profanity, profanity!

She made every possible mistake she could:

* Left no detailed directions where she was going;
* Didn't notify anyone locally;
* No map;
* Only took 3 gallons of water to a desolate area famous for high temps in summer;
* Depended on GPS and cell phone;
* Left the road;
* Figured 4WD could go anywhere;
* If it were possible to get the Jeep out of the hole, she didn't know what it was;
* Left the tire and rim behind;

And probably no knowledge of how to build a smokey signal fire, nothing to create shade.

Poor little boy, poor little dog.

Really sad. Obviously not enough water; 24x16oz of water in that locale is a good start for a day, for one person. She probably presumed that they'd arrive and she didn't anticipate any issues. You just can't have too much water. Heck, I take that much water on a drive up I-5.

As has been noted, 4x4's are part of the problem, folks seem to be more careful with 2WD.

This is certainly a situation where a PLB would have made all the difference. But then if you don't plan well enough to bring more water than that to Death Valley in August, you probably don't own a PLB. And if you did have the water and the PLB, you are probably the kind of person who wouldn't try an offroad trip to Death Valley in August with a young child.

Not being snarky here, and I do feel for the mom. Thinking of that little kid drying out gets to me.

I brag all the time on what my Jeep is capable of, but I do know its limitations. I also know a lot about getting a vehicle repaired or unstuck. I talk to a lot of people who really believe the shifter or button that says "4WD" on it is magic. Like you push the button, and suddenly nothing can stop the vehicle.

Plus I've spend a good bit of time and $ upgrading parts on my Jeep (no chrome aftermarket shiny crap, "chrome won't get you home"), like lockers, M/T tires, and such. And I know the major differences between a lot of "SUV's" and a real 4wd vehicle.

There are actually people who think their 2WD vehicle is as good as a 4WD just because it's an SUV.

Oh - and if I ever have to drive through a desert (we don't have those around here), I'd bring a ton of water with me. And if I'm going further than a day's walking distance from roads, there WILL be other vehicles along with me.

Wow. Very sad story but you guys already hit the nail on the head. There was no plan B; if plan A (NOTHING goes wrong) failed then there were likely to be dire consequenses.

Our local paper said they went on Saturday for an overnight camping trip, so I'll assume she thought they had enough food and water for however many hours they were supposed to be out.

I'm sorry to say she made many mistakes, as has been pointed out in this thread. If I recall, they'd recently moved to Las Vegas from the east coast, so she didn't know what she was getting into. I'd guess she not only didn't know, she didn't know she didn't know, the problem of unknown unknowns.

What a disaster.

I agree to a point but should a half way reasonable person raise an eyebrow when planning a backcountry outing someplace called "Death Valley".

In addition to the common sense factor; the NPS is pretty good (where I've travelled anyway) at doing everything short of smacking folks in the head with a 2x4 to try and get them to take care of themselves.

No kidding. First paragraph from the NPS website.

Hopefully it's temporary because of the companies financial troubles hitting quality control. But jeep comes bottom of the owners reliability surveys in the UK.
Note this is what the owners themselves say about how reliable their jeeps are. Not what makers, or owners of other vehicles say; (which is what people claim if their vehicle comes low).
For some reasons cars are like guns. People take criticism of theirs personally, (they are just pieces of metal chaps). So no offense is intended! And no; I'm not replying to anyone saying 'well my jeep has never gone wrong but the honda next door is.....'
Sushi

That's actually kind of funny to me, as stateside Land Rover is usually at the bottom of our owner reliability surveys.

With that in mind, Jeep isn't much further ahead, neither is Hummer. Makes me wonder why companies have so much trouble making good small 4x4's? Even Toyota has problems with the FJ Cruiser

Anyway, our older Jeeps with the 4.0L inline-6 and spartan interior options tend to be very reliable. The older V8 models and all the newer models are somewhat questionable, especially once you start loading them with options. For some reason Jeep's biggest issue has always been electrical stuff. The hardware they use is usually pretty solid stuff (Dana axles, Borg Warner/Tremec transmissions, ect), but once they had to start computerizing stuff....forget it.

Paul, i agree with your assessment on the Jeeps.

Apparently she drove the Jeep Cherokee off the dirt road and over an animal den which collapsed, burying the Jeep up to the axle. Maybe there's newer info on that? The media seems a bit slow in this case to catch up to the full truth.

We don't know enough to tell whether a more capable driver could have extricated the Jeep from that situation. Or whether a more capable vehicle could have gotten out of that hole.

Point is, I haven't seen any reason to disparage Jeep in this instance.

If there's some indication that the vehicle was culpable, then by all means let's see it.

By the way, I happily drive a reliable, but much less off-road capable Honda Element. It's a pity Jeep has relatively poor reliability ratings because I would be very interested in a new Wrangler one day.

Looks like this woman was not prepared to be out there with the child and dog, no matter the vehicle she was driving.

Las Vegas Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/news/52756377.html

She ended up taking the Owl Hole Spring Road, a gravel road in the far south of the park that goes from the valley into the Owlshead Mountains. The trail, which requires four-wheel drive, dips briefly into the China Lake Naval Weapons Center before leading to a communications tower.

Shortly after turning onto the trail, the Jeep had a flat tire. Sanchez changed it and left the flattened tire on the side of the road, with a water bottle next to it.

She continued, navigating the 30-mile road nearly until it ends, Baldino said. But where the trail makes a sharp right, she went left down a trail that's not marked on the park's maps.

Why she did it, officials don't know, Baldino said.

On the trail the Jeep fell into a collapsed animal burrow and became stuck, Baldino said.

recently moved or not, it's called DEATH valley for a reason. I mean, they can't make it any more clear.

I imagine her self-critique is way harsher than anything we could add.

> In addition to the common sense factor

My mantra is, there's no such thing as common sense. I've yet to be convinced I'm wrong in that opinion. :-\

The vehicle she was driving didn't really seem to be the issue. It was probably more a case of multiple poor choices of someone who has watched a lifelong diet of happy endings. I doubt that it even occurred to her that anything could go wrong. Just another trip through Dizzyland.

The kids and the pets are always the ones who pay.

Yeah, I don't think the vehicle choice played much into it, after doing a little more reading on the situation. More a matter of lack of knowledge. Knowledge of the water situation being first and foremost in my mind, followed by knowing where you're going and making sure others know also.

In this instance, I don't even know if making sure others knew when to expect her or where she was traveling would have saved them. She went off her planned path anyway.

The number one problem I see is going alone without at least one other vehicle. No matter how much recovery gear, experience in fixing/recovering a vehicle, knowledge of the area, etc... you have, it's still possible to get in way over your head. Living in Alabama where we don't have deserts or even wide open spaces like that, I can't imagine the conditions there, so I would not have undertaken that trip solo.

Reading on this forum about the various misadventures of others has helped me in my preparedness. I don't have a PLB, but do carry a Spot Tracker with me, which I test often, and extra batteries.

Sadly, too many of us assume we can rely on technology and don't do our homework before heading off the beaten path.

I've been through DV in the spring - don't know what she was thinking heading out there in the heat of the summer.

Poor kid . . .

I've been to Death Valley in the summer, but I did it very carefully.

For one, I never left the paved roads. Summer isn't the time to go offroading there, because even one mistake can kill you. And the rangers do cruise the roads, checking stopped cars. Both times I was there, they stopped to see if everything was okay.

Secondly, even though I was staying on the paved roads, more than half the net weight in my car was due to water. I always had water in the car, even in town. Desert = carry water.

But I grew up in southern California, and know how little natural water there is.

People who are not familiar with deserts often don't realize how large they really are. The Mojave Desert alone (Death Valley is just part of it) encompasses over 22,000 square miles (MILES, not acres). And the Great Basin (only part true desert, the rest is just dry), lies to the north with over 200,000 square miles. To the south and east lies the Low Desert (aka the Sonoran Desert) that extends into Mexico, covering 120,000 sq miles. That's a total of about 340,000 square MILES of mostly uninhabited space with almost no accessible water.

People who know the desert just from television and movies just don't understand.

I think that's it. Louise and I have camped in Death Valley a few time over Thanksgiving, but we never leave the roads, we carry a satellite phone and our HF transceiver, and we have more food and water than we'll need (so far).

We read the Death Valley bulletin boards about conditions before we go. Those guys have 4WD and tires with more plies than I've ever heard of, jacks, winches, and think they're having fun. :-> It's a scary place if you know enough.

I really feel sorry for the woman. She's learned a very harsh lesson at her son's expense. That's something she'll live with every day.

I think you're right - it's almost always not one mistake that kills you. It's an accumulation of poor choices plus some other factors you don't control. We all do those dumb things, but mostly we don't pay this hard a price.

If she is a nurse and she truely made all these mistakes, I feel worried about ptients in the hospoital where she works.

Sorry but this is how I feel.
And yes I am very upset for the boy

The only justification I can see for her is that maybe she has panicked. When you leave a flat tire and wheel ( and a water bottle too) and then take a turn into an unmarked trail ... there must be something wrong like she has started freaking out.

Hard to say what was going through her head. After changing a tire in the desert heat and leaving in such a hurry that she left the tire and water behind, frustration and anxiety (maybe anger) come to mind. Who knows. . . Suffice to say she maybe realized she was in over her head. At this point I'd be looking to turn around, but that would disappoint the kid so she pressed on.

I've used a GPS long enough to realize that they are very fallible (not infallible). For a trip like this I'd pre-flight by comparing the GPS maps to GoogleEarth. Adds just a bit of reality to the situation.

Stay on paved roads. Carry lots of water. I have 3 gallons in the truck now and I'll be on I-5 for my entire trip.

I think after the first day I would have traveled by night back the way I came, hoping to get back to the main road. Not sure how far that might have been, maybe dozens of miles or more.

What's the best thing to do if you find yourself in the same situation? Of course she should have been better-prepared, or shouldn't have been there in the first place, but given the case of water and some camping gear, what would you do in the same circumstances? Let's say she's 25 miles from a main road...can she hike out alive?

So, should she be forced to pay for her rescue based on her apparently reckless behavior?

Or would that be a wast of resources based on the likelihood that she was insane at the time?

> If she is a nurse and she truely made all these mistakes, I feel worried
> about ptients in the hospoital where she works.

I'm sorry to say I don't see the connection; can you enlighten me, please?

"I think after the first day I would have traveled by night back the way I came, hoping to get back to the main road. Not sure how far that might have been, maybe dozens of miles or more."

Good point. The usual advice is to stay put, but if you know you only have one day's worth of water left, do you use it on a night trek or stay, hoping for rescue the next day? If you stay and rescue doesn't come, do you walk out the second night without water?

I worked in an underground mine on the border of Death Valley for a couple of years. We had a couple of "mishaps" with the four-wheel drives in the valley. Twice we walked out at night. We never went out alone, always had plenty of water, and knew the area well, so that probably isn't a fair comparison.

I might be going a bit sideways on this post, but oh well.

One of the first points about survival situations is to avoid them.
I think the whole point of being prepared is to prevent a relatively small emergency from becoming a life threatening situation.
The more dangerous it is the more you need to do to reduce the risks.

Apparently something went seriously wrong with the risk assessment and the responses to it in her case.

I noted earlier that a lot of people place to much faith in their vehicles.
I do not care what a piece of machinery is. Skidoo. plane, jeep or train. I am not willing to bet my life on it working or not if I can help it.

What she should have done after the fact is moot.

I can not fault her for being able to change a tire but leaving the flat behind. I can't even fault her getting stuck and being unable to get unstuck.
She likely did the best she could with what she had.

It is what she should have done before she started her death ride across the burning sands that might have made a difference.

Her losing her son was a tragedy and it was 100% preventable.

I do not think it helps to blame, but I do think it might help prevent others from making the same dumb mistakes if it is mentioned.

I can fault her for:
not leaving travel plans, contact points
not making sure she had good communications
not having a good map,not having effective navigationaids
not having enough enough water to last until help arrived.

I can fault her for not having something to dig or pull her jeep out when it got stuck and for going to far from a safe return point to get home if her vehicle failed her...

There are a lot of things I could find fault with.

There are a lot of things many of us would have done differently before even turning the ignition key on that trip, just out of habit.

I would like to hear more about what could have been done by her to avoid her situation before it became a desperate tragedy.

Best to just stay with the vehicle especially if you do not know where you are and do not where you are heading if you want to walk out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CT0470DVKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJkG4H4x8pE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tORer5pJJxM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3XhZOyisrU

Although in this tragic case just because this unfortunate woman had a GPS it didn't mean she knew where she was, let alone know in which directional to head off to, even if she attempted a hike out. She also had a working vehicle, which was capable of being driven out if she had the ability to get it out of the hole it was in. A lot of folks just give up if their vehicles get bogged down when a little more persistence will usually get the vehicle free, even if it means digging it out all night long (assuming of course she even had a shovel).

Even leaving the tyre behind was a mistake as it would of made a nice smoky black signal fire. She should of made herself a cup of tea after changing the tyre and had a little think about what she was going to do next and to calm down. It sounds as though she panicked when she got the first puncture even perhaps thinking travelling off road over sandy terrain would have made the chances of getting a second tire puncture less probable.

This is strange....

I just dragged out my SoCal maps and looked at the area (haven't been there since 1980).

This woman was found 20 miles east of Trona. There is nothing there but dirt roads ending in sand. Where on earth did she think she was going? If they were going to Death Valley, why not just take the highway north right into the park?

And, since she still must have had a reasonable idea where she was, all they had to do when they realized they were stuck was take as much water as they could carry, wait for the sun to get low, and walk more or less straight west until they hit the highway. They started out with 25 lbs of water, so by the time they were in trouble, they might have had 20 lbs left, and each of them could have carried 10 lbs.

They had intended to camp overnight, so presumably they had something they could take for a sunshade. Twenty lousy miles -- they should have made it in two days, maximum.

Instead, she sat there in the sun for FIVE WHOLE DAYS and watched her son die.

What happened?

Was she afraid of the dark? Didn't know which way was west, that that's where the sun goes down? Afraid of harmless coyotes yipping? Too certain that they would be found soon, even though no one knew where they were? Afraid that the coyotes would steal the car? Incapable of thinking rationally at all in a tight situation?

By the way, staying with the vehicle is not a rule that is carved in stone. Staying with the car when you're miles and miles into the wilderness, or don't know where you are, is one thing. She was WAAAAAY too close to the highway (in almost a straight line) to think staying with the car was her only viable choice. They could have followed their own tire tracks back to the road.

Sue..this is what the survival issue is all about.people make bad choices.we try and get into their head so we don't make the same mistakes but until it happens who knows what we might really do.

The first thing to do is Attract Attention,That spare tire would burn quite readily,& The Black smoke would indicate some serious problems were happening.That whole area is frequented by Military Patrols,Rangers,& Most of all Miners,of whom many live on their claims,not to mention everyday explorers/trekkers!Smoke can be seen for Many,Many Miles in the desert,especially Black Smoke.I was in the Chinamans Ranch area aprox.25 miles east as the crow flies,just last week,& we converged on a backtrail,when we saw smoke from a Spot fire,probably 10 miles away,when we arrived,there were about 30 other vehicles there,before us,A family RV was stuck,& they lit a spare tire ablaze.Many more people were on their way there,as we were heading back.Remember this-Fire Attracts Attention! Just my 2 cents!

They had a Dachshund with them?Those "Harmless" Coyotes regularly eat family pets,including Rottweilers,German shephards,etc. They are pack animals,& in a pack,are some of the most efficient killers of prey on this Planet! Just ask any of our Many outdoorsman on this site,they will most certainly agree.

I'm sure you see the connection. Although you may not agreed that her inability to (in this situation) plan appropriately or work though unfamiliar problems under stress necessarily apply to her vocational abilities as well.

Personally, I don't know the woman so I have absolutely no idea whether she's a competent nurse or not. She may be a great nurse but was operating far outside her area of expertise and failed to recognize it.

I will agree that this event is not de facto evidence that her nursing abilities are below par. However, if this event were the only thing I knew about the woman and she was going to be my nurse, I would at least have a little question mark next to her name in my mind.

Saddening.

Lots of opportunity to pick apart everything she did wrong. I'm going to defer at this point.

At least she packed some water, at least enough to get herself out. No consolation of course, losing a child is the worst thing I can imagine.

How many folks have we read about that didn't think to take anything?

(posting this as someone that has unintentionally done a bunch of stupid stuff in the past and will again...).

Great point, thanks. Especially when you've got a flat to burn.

Monday morning quarterbacking after an incident like this is quite different from being in the unimaginably stressful situation, in 100+ degree heat (or freezing), worrying for your child. Most respect that.

The sober "after-action report/analysis" is how people learn and hopefully prevent some others from repeating the mistakes.

I'm still not clear on how much water one woman, a child and a little dog should have with them in Death Valley in summertime - if you stayed on the highway as most people do.

I've driven across country a few times -- in a 1969 Mustang and a Miata. Just me and a dog in the Miata. Just me in the Mustang (no cell phone on that trip). We didn't drive across Death Valley but we were going across Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. Interstates mostly, top temps in the 80s or 90s. But still I should have been more prepared than I was. I recall "Next Service Station 100+ miles" signage. I've been lucky, so far.

That Mustang had 205,000 miles on a newly overhauled engine. On the first day I pulled off in Idaho after smelling gas. Everything seemed fine and I didn't notice any more gas odor the rest of the trip. Got to DC a week later and 3 of the 4 bolts securing the carburetor to the engine were missing. The gasket was holding it together.

For my dog's sake I should carry more water than I have. For myself I usually had only a soda from the last fast food place we'd stopped at.

Is there a particular survival guide that peops here would recommend keeping in the car?

Obviously a book can't predict every nuance of a situation we might find ourselves in but basics like signaling and things to consider such as whether to stay with the vehicle would be helpful. Could be a useful touchstone if your mind is racing. Or at least give a panicky passenger something to read. Or provide tp.

> I'm sure you see the connection.

No, sorry, I don't. And to add to my confusion, you say you have no idea if she's a good nurse, this event is not de facto evidence of her abilities, she may be a great nurse, etc. I don't see the connection between survival skills in Death Valley and whatever her career is. And your comments don't assure me that there is one.

I don't expect my auto mechanic, barber, and financial advisor to be able to camp in Death Valley to prove their competence in their fields, but maybe that's just me.

My barber doesn't make life and death decisions for me or my family.

I would expect a health care professional that may have to make life and death decisions for my family to be able to think on their feet, exhibit some problem solving and planning skills.

Like I said, I don't consider the sad events in Death Valley to be de facto evidence that she's incompetent but (in my opinion ) they can't be completely ignored either.

We obviously don't agree whether or not her inability to plan or problem solve in this situation has any relation to her vocational abilities. I can't completely separate one group of decisions from the other. If you can then great. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion right?

It's a testament to Philip's good character that he doesn't rush to harsh judgments, or readily condemn, people for their errors in judgment. Too often, it seems to me that some here a a bit quick, and perhaps overly critical, in their pronouncements about the failings of ordinary people who do lack our generally higher level of awareness and preparation, and end up paying the price for it. But, that being said, I've kinda got to go with NightHiker on this one.

It's reasonable to expect good decision-making from health care professionals regarding basic safety and physiological needs. Dehydration and heat illness are, indeed, common medical emergencies, and entirely foreseeable risks in the context at hand, and she, as an RN, really should have anticipated them, in my opinion.

Agreed. Philip seems to have a great heart for folks and it's obvious that he tries to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

There doesn't seem to be any shortage of people (particularly online) willing to pile on and condemn someone that has made a mistake. I would think that a great deal of that stems from thinking we would do better, hoping we would do better & wanting others to think we would do better. Of course we all have the luxuries of with time to think with a clear head, foresight and hindsight.

I typically try to avoid condemning anyone in thread like this because, no matter how many news reports I've read, I wasn't there. I know what it's like to have people Monday morning quarterback your decisions. I earn my living making important decisions on zero notice. I spend a good portion of my time sitting in meetings just in case I have to defend myself or a member of my team from a Monday morning quarterback. My mere presence there seems to slow mouths down (and speed brains up) enough that I rarely have to speak.

[quote=NightHiker it's probably too much to hope that most of them will be able to extrapolate anything more from it than "oh wow, they call it Death Valley for a reason" [/quote]

I assume that was a dig at me... but mainly I was trying to avoid attacking every decision she made. I mean, she lost her kid. watched him die in front of her, over 4 days. i think that's a pretty good lesson there. she doesn't need me to critique her from my couch.

Anyway, to answer some of the questions... I grew up in SoCal, about 4 hour drive to Vegas. We (my family and I, then myself with friends) made that trip dozens of times. Always along the interstate. Even then, we usually carried 2 quarts of water, and some sodas, in case we broke down along the highway. I-15 is pretty well traveled, so I was never worried about being too far from someone. Plus, Baker and Barstow are pretty much equidistant between Vegas and the greater-LA metro area.

I've also camped in Joshua Tree and Anzo-Borrego. Rule of thumb was one 2.5gallon water bottle (from the supermarket) per person, usually for 2-3 day average trip. Obviously multiple bottles if longer than 3 days. These camping trips were all car-camping, so weight wasn't so much an issue. I doubt I'd ever want to hike there (though I hear part of the Pacific Crest Trail runs through desert) and carry my own water.

"Those "Harmless" Coyotes regularly eat family pets..."

Yes, they certainly do... when the pets are running loose, when the pets are in the back yard at night.

NOT usually when the pet is on a leash walking beside the owner.


Dagney, in hot weather, at least one gallon per person per day, probably the same for a large dog. If you're going into rough, mostly-unoccupied country, as much as you can take with you.

Other than taking some water with them, I haven't read any article that indicated this woman did anything that involved common sense. Kind of odd that the largest body survived, and the smallest body survived.

Now, I'm sure this will sound nasty to many, but IF she was some kind of PsychoMom, and IF she wanted to kill her son without hands-on violence or blame, I don't think she could have done a better job than she did.

Sympathy for incredibly stupid people? Not from me. I'll save my sympathy for their victims. And the count continues...

I do not want to read her mind from a distance and ascribe motives. That would be a bit crazy. I will leave it to others to figure out if she was suicidal, homicidal or insane.
Her being only 20 miles from the highway might not be something she knew either. After all, she drove over 30 miles down the trail before she got stuck.

Parts of the story indicate some self reliance like being able to change a tire, trying to get to a high point and try calling on the cell phone, etc.
Maybe she simply got lost and didn't know how to locate herself.
Lots of us take wrong turns and she seems to have turned the wrong direction at least twice. I have even seen people lost with compasses, GPS and maps who simply would not believe where they were or which way north was until you walked them out the trail to their car.
Oh well...

Maybe the only lessons we can glean out of this is how bad things can fall apart when they start to fall apart and how it is important to be ready for it when they do.

I have an excuse she can use. . . It's not like she just drove out into Death Valley, she was in found in the southwest corner of Death Valley National Park (which could be considered an oxymoron). I don't know what she expected, but back east the parks are relatively safe. . . and green. . . and a park ranger will be along any minute to offer assistance or tell her she can't park where her car broke down. Dorothy's not in Kansas any more.

Truly. Unless they've driven across the country or at least around the western expanses, DC friends are surprised when I say you may have to go over 100 miles before there's another gas station. And that's Interstate.

I don't worry about getting lost in Shenandoah National Park because if I can determine east or west, help is not terribly far away. (being injured and doing so is another matter, of course). And well-marked trails abound.

The biggest external danger in SNP is being run over by a speeding RV.

I think she had recently moved from Illinois. Don't know what her life history is.

Some things to think on

I believe I read somewhere a number of years ago that simply being dehydrated as little as 5% can affect a persons judgment and interfere with clear thought processes.

Was the found water bottle full or empty? Was she strong enough to put the flat tire back in the car, in the temperatures she was in, or was she weakened by lack of water and the heat? Did she put a note with the tire that may have been lost? Who knows.

Will we ever know what really happened?

BTW, when full 24 16 ounce bottles equal 384 ounces divided by 128 (ounces in a US gallon) equals 3 gallons of water.

.

Sorry if my comment stirred a small conroversy

I am not really condemning the woman. I am just spelling my fear if someone who deals with matters of life and death goes on to make all such mistakes. That is scary.

After spelling my fear I went on to analyze the story from anothe rangle. The other half of my post contains an attempt to find some justification or clarifiacation to why she did what she did.

Phillip
You are right that there is generally no connection between her job as a nurse and survival skills in desert condition, that is not what I meant.

I meant that a professional is supposed to have a minimum level of intelligence to make decisions in perplexing situations. A medic has to figure out someone's problem and try to cure it before someone dies. An engineer has to analyze a complex situation with many (almost chaotic) nature and draw a plan to resolve it. A business or financial consultant ... you know the rest.

In addition to that, you can add her medical knowledge of what happens to humans in that kind of harsh environment and link it to her decision to take such a trip in that time of the year in ONE car, and NO OTHER ADULTS.

I will NEVER take this kind of trip even if I was WAAAY more prepared than her, 'cause I can't guarantee that a heart attack won't choose that time to flatten me and leave the kid alone in the middle of nowhere.


That is what I meant.

And sorry if I confused anyone
That was just my 1.5 ¢

NightHiker,
For what's it's worth my comment about piling on was not directed at anyone in particular; certainly not you. The members here at ETS seem to be far less eager to pile on that many other online arenas.

> Everyone is entitled to their own opinion right?

And I'm very happy that's the case.

That is an excellent point. A lot of heart attack victims didn't know they had a heart problem, or the extent of it.

I camp in popular, developed campgrounds, hike with others and don't have children with me.

It's just a whole nother ballgame when a child is 100% dependent on you.

I hope this woman never Googles herself -- a particularly cruel modern twist on such debacles.

"Maybe she simply got lost and didn't know how to locate herself."

She was there for several days, with the highway going roughly north and south on the west side, and the mountains on the east. The sun sets in the west. She was in sand after she left the road. Her jeep made tracks. All she had to do was follow them.

"It's not like she just drove out into Death Valley, she was in found in the southwest corner of Death Valley National Park."

Where she was found, it seems that she never actually went into the park proper, because I don't see how she got as close to Trona as she did from inside the park. She hit the very outside SW corner of it, probably accidentally. What she appeared to have done was just drive out into an unknown, uninhabited part of raw desert without a care in the world. She had a flat and kept on going. What was her plan if she had another flat?

Children are totally dependent on the decisions that their parents make, they don't have the option of making their own decisions, esp in cases like this. She made the decisions, he paid for them.

By the way, one article indicated that she used to live in San Antonio, so I would suspect that the desert wasn't new to her, which makes this incident stranger still.

Reminds me of a quote I've never forgotten from an old book on dayhiking by John Long: "the desert will have your respect, or it will bleach your bones".

> By the way, one article indicated that she used to live in San Antonio, so I
> would suspect that the desert wasn't new to her, which makes this incident
> stranger still.

In Texas? Not a desert by a long shot.

The opposite sometimes happens. Someone who is very competent and confident in one domain, assumes that competence carries over into another domain and comes a cropper when it doesn't. So I wouldn't suppose that her coming a cropper here means she is bad at her job.

And it sometimes happens that medical staff are brilliant at working with strangers, but go to pieces when the patient is a friend of theirs, eg another nurse. It can help to have a certain amount of detachment, and to consider problems dispassionately. That may have been a factor too: she may have been less good at her own survival than other people's.

Actually, she did. There were "family members' reports that she planned to camp in free sites and visit the Scotty's Castle attraction in the far northeast corner of the vast national park." That's not where she ended up, unfortunately. It looks like she somehow got lost.

She also sent a text message about needing to change a tyre. She was communicating.

She didn't have a map or compass, and her GPS was part of the vehicle so she couldn't take it with her. She'd have been navigating blind. I don't know the area, but I imagine there was a risk she'd have ended up going round in circles, or sprained an ankle, or something.

It's worth noting that she was found pretty quickly, once they'd given up looking in the wrong place. Friends gave the alert at 5pm Wednesday, the air and ground search started dawn Thursday, and the woman and her son's body were found about 11 a.m. If she hadn't stayed with her vehicle, she probably wouldn't have been found so easily.

Well said Brandon.

And very true.

This is more true than most people realize. I could get lost in a telephone booth. So I over-prepare with maps, compass, and gps. I constantly try to update myself as to my orientation and position. I'm still frequently wrong.

My wife and her father are homing pidgeons. They are the only members of their family like this. You could blindfold them, knock them out, take them to a strange city at night, and they can tell you where north is. Many times in the woods, my wife and I have different ideas as to which way to go, but I always listen to her. She's never been wrong yet.

I have no explanation for this, either.

I agree with other posters, when other people depend on you, especially kids, it drastically changes how you plan and approach things like this.

I have a fair ability to keep directions straight, but I also have enough time navigating to not trust that instinct with my life. A compass, map and GPS trump instinct any day.

You're WAY ahead of a lot of people just in admitting that you aren't great at this. It took my wife YEARS to admit that she can't use a map. We once took a trip and (she SO wanted to navigate) I made each turn in the exact opposite direction that she directed. She was wrong every single time and we arrived on time. I've probably never laughed so hard. If she lays the whole trip out in advance she's OK but if she tries to start navigating on the fly without notice she's lost (literaly). lol

Leaving directions where you AREN'T going is the same as not leaving directions at all. The state of California is approx. the size of Britain. She was 85 miles from Scotty's Castle.

She did send a text message about the flat tire, entirely omitting where she was at the time, a useless message except to indicate she was still alive.

If she had had a map, left her vehicle the same evening and started walking straight west, they probably would have been found the next day.

If people don't know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, they shouldn't be allowed near a wilderness area with children or pets.

...or be allowed dress themselves, drive, VOTE or procreate.





It's only humor folks.

I'm actually pretty good at this too. Not so much since I've moved to VA, but darn near the rest of my life. I joke there's too much metal in the surrounding shipyards and it messes up my internal compass. Who knows? All I know is in my car kit and BOB is essentially just a button compass. I don't have a good map of the area yet, but I trust myself and that little back-up to get me moving should something happen.

Even if you're not "gifted" with a sense of direction, you can do most of it based on environmental clues. Just knowing where the sun rises adn sets gets you pretty good bearings. Watching dominant weather patterns helps too - ie, knowing that storms usually move in from X direction. Night is easy too, if you can find the north start. Other constellations help a bit, if you use the same time each night (since they rotate during the night, as well as daily movements) and get the gist of their seasonal variations.

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

I was working with 5 other people in the back county of Death Valley the same week this tragedy occurred and we never heard about it until we got back to Stovepipe Wells the day after they found the woman. I feel awful that we were only about 15 miles at one point from where she got stuck on the first day of her ordeal! It was blistering hot there - the daily temperatures were over 120 degrees that week.

For safety's sake, we told everyone where we would be during the day, and took the precaution of traveling with at least two vehicles each day to our worksites (one as a life boat just in case). We also brought 5+ gallons of water per person per day (extra to splash around to cool off with), a bunch of towels and a large cooler filled with nothing but ice (to cool off with). If someone did get too hot, we would have used the towels, water and ice to cool them off with. The drinking water was kept cool but not iced or too cold (you can kill yourself drinking ice water when you are hot).

There is NO cell phone coverage in Death Valley - we had more than 6 cell phones between all of us with more than three different carriers and none of them could send calls. So for backup, I brought my 2-meter portable ham radio (which never raised anyone when I tried to make hello calls with it). Our main emergency communications was covered by three SPOT emergency satellite transponders, which we used for daily safety check-in calls too.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of mistakes that woman made which led to the death of her son. Even though some had suggested that she should have walked out to get help, this would have been certain death. The nights do not cool off that much down there - it was still over 100 degrees at 11PM! The area where she was in is very remote, and to try to see a human walking out there would have been next to impossible. Another woman died the week before in the park trying to walk back to her car from the dunes near Stovepipe Wells. Walking anywhere during the summer down there is very dangerous and should not be attempted unless you have water cached along your route.

The most basic things she could have done to have survived this would have been to take at least 5 gallons of water for each of them (10 gallons), a real map, and communicate with people as to where she was going to be with a check-in call planned. The park visitor centers will do this for you if you want - just let them know who, when and where and they will send help if you don't check in. Oh yea - Don't forget to check in if you are done with your trip too, because you will get a call from a ranger and they won't be happy if they find you safely at home!!

Welcome aboard, Sagebrush_.

Good post. There is no substitute for on-the-ground knowledge.

Seems this unfortunate soul got in very deep, very fast. Sobering to say the least.

On balance, I think I'd much rather hunker down in a howling prairie blizzard than try my luck in a desert that extreme.

I figure she left directions for where she intended going and then got lost. She certainly made a lot of mistakes, but at least some things she tried to get right.

She changed the tyre herself. She dealt with it, and wasn't asking for rescue at that point. The message wasn't useless; it contributed to her friend's concern, and also helped the people tracking her when they found the tyre.

I'm going to follow Sagebrush's view on this.

The child died, but the adult and the dog survived, and that's partly because of the things she got right. I think it's dangerous to polarise the issue. We all make mistakes. Dismissing her as completely stupid contributes to the belief that disasters only happen to other people (ie, stupid people).

Also, I suspect there was more to it we don't know. For example, it sounds like the car GPS was less useful than she expected. I would be very interested to hear her version of events.

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...

I'm sure that the issue with the dog was obvious to most people who read this board, but I think it still needed to be explicitly mentioned. It's another piece of evidence that the mother unfortunately did not immediately understand how serious the situation was. I also don't claim that the child would still be alive if he had received the dog's water. The point isn't whether or not the child would have lived, the point I was making is that the mother's actions reveal that there was a lack of realization. We all have made mistakes. The point of this board is to learn from other people's experiences. I have learned several valuable lessons from this tragedy and the discussion here.