Hunt for the Death Valley Germans (2015)
otherhand.org
otherhand.org
As a further illustration of how remote this area is, the safety briefing for the range mentions two important points: 1) if you are injured and it's not life threatening, it will take 3-4 hours to get you to a hospital. Someone has to drive you off the range to meet the ambulance just east of Coso Junction since there's no way an ambulance can get into the range. The terrain is to rugged. Coso Junction is also about an hour north of Ridgrecrest/China Lake. 2) if you are seriously injured, the only way out is on a helicopter. It takes about 25 minutes to get a helicopter up to the range.
This area is starkly beautiful and there's a lot of interesting things to see and do, but it is absolutely deadly. You can't go in unprepared.
And they had cellphones. They asked for directions. They simply were confused, took the wrong route, their signal disappeared and they ran out of gas.
http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/searchi...
It didn't seem to be a stupid thing to do, we had lots of water in the car, we stuck to paved roads and although we probably only met one other car on the way north, once in death valley there was occasional traffic.
There have been several times when I've set off down dirt tracks in unsuitable vehicles for a bit of an adventure, and so far haven't come unstuck, but it's always been in western europe and not somewhere like this.
So maybe I'm just like the germans in this situation...
But then I looked at the map and started scouting around at where they had decided to go...
It may have been a couple of small decisions that led to disaster once they were up there, but the larger decision to head off up a 40 mile sandy/rocky dirt track to get over the very imposing mountains in the desert in July was the one that it was obvious (from my point of view) not to take.
The root cause, to me, was normal complacency. Looking at a map and not taking the words "Death Valley" seriously. Seeing 500km from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and planning like it's Berlin to Munich. Everything else in the tragedy stems from that. We all do it. Looking at the bottle with a skull and crossbones and doubting it's seriousness because day to day our lives don't include bottles of poison. We're conditioned assume Death Valley is ironic branding by a tourist board based our everyday media experience.
Interpreting the tragedy as a series of small mistakes is attractive. But the article's story is all about not making the fundamental mistake of taking Death Valley lightly...and even then it's full of near disasters where the experienced search and rescue operators almost take it too lightly and come closer to the envelope than intended simply because 99% reliable isn't 100%, because of the weather, and because there's no one around.
It doesn't sound like you did anything stupid. You didn't go even remotely close to where the German's went in this case. They went into areas on roads that nobody would normally tackle without a serious 4x4 and a backup plan. They went down the westside unpaved road up to Warm Springs Camp and the Geologists Stone Cabin. The thing reading it that surprised me is that they tried this in a station wagon, not a 4x4, and never got the sense to turn around, and then from the Stone Cabin they went waaaay into serious offroad territory trying to drive down the wash.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2p...
Driving off road is an American cultural thing and roads and deliberately maintained for those enthusiasts. These were not the first Europeans to underestimate driving in USA.
In the last year or so around a dozen people have died after vehicle failure or other bad luck.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/08/boy-1...
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/what-a-tragic-end-German-couple-...
https://nypost.com/2018/01/11/tourist-dies-hiking-in-austral...
Driving around on main roads during the day, you can drive for hours and only occasionally run into other people. Leave the main roads unprepared and you may end up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS
Even main roads are not a guarantee for a good experience. We stayed in the park a bit too long and wanted to avoid driving out in the dark via the steep winding roads near Panamint Springs on the way out by taking the 178 to Ridgecrest. Driving 70 miles of pothole-riddled desert road in pitch black with not a soul nearby was not fun. And this is a California state route that we researched in advance.
Also for folks not familiar with USA roads, you can be on a State Highway, US Highway, or even the Interstate system and still be pothole ridden. Every state has jokes about their roads being the worst and the neighboring being the best (and they all think they are unique). Just the nature of roadways and government management.
In the Netherlands, no matter how far you go from major cities, it is never as dark as in the middle of the desert. I enjoyed some beautiful views of the Milky Way, with thousands of stars normally hidden by light pollution, but then quickly got back into the safety of the car ;)
Could someone be so kind as to give a 2-3 sentence summary? Looks like some German tourists got lost in the desert, and the author tried to track them down or retrace their steps?
From reading the story, the crucial mistake might have been made when their van got stuck: instead of trying to walk back to a shelter with spring water supply they knew about because they had been there on their way out, they walked deeper into the desert trying to reach a military area where they hoped to find soldiers. They walked way beyond the point of no return and didn't find soldiers.
People will do extraordinary things fighting for their lives and for their children's lives.
Deserts are a very deceptive places where the danger is never apparent.I have met many people who have underestimate the desert and what it can do to you.
Luckily I managed to read his hunt for the crashed A-12 before he did.