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