According to a National Park Service news release, the 42-year-old Belgian tourist was taking a short walk Saturday in the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in 123-degree heat when he either broke or lost his flip-flops, putting his feet into direct contact with the desert ground. The result: third-degree burns.
“The skin was melted off his foot,” said Death Valley National Park Service Ranger Gia Ponce. “The ground can be much hotter — 170, 180 [degrees]. Sometimes up into the 200 range.”
Unable to get out on his own and in extreme pain, the man and his family recruited other park visitors to help; together, the group carried him to the sand dunes parking lot, where park rangers assessed his injuries.
Though they wanted a helicopter to fly him out, helicopters can’t generate enough lift to fly in the heat-thinned air over the hottest parts of Death Valley, officials said. So park rangers summoned an ambulance that took him to higher ground, where it was a cooler 109 degrees and he could then be flown out.
So do we just need to close death valley or require permits in the summer or something? The safety issues seem to be compounding with the extreme heat.
I assume you have to pay a fee to enter Death Valley National Park, and like every National Park I assume the rangers at the entrance and signage all throughout warn you of potential dangers. You can easily get yourself in trouble at Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, or Big Bend National Parks, for example, if you don’t take the risks seriously and make poor decisions.
Sure but those other parks… they aren’t called “Deathstone” or “Death Mountain” or “Big Death”…
I feel like Death Valley is being very frank with you on the matter.
I bet more people have died at each of the other 3 parks than at Death Valley NP. Maybe there’s data out there on that somewhere
Interestingly, the park service have a very nice dashboard to look at this:
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/mortality-data.htm
However, it doesn’t give you the deaths per count of visitors.
This article claims Denali, to be the top park in deaths per capita.
https://www.backpacker.com/survival/the-10-most-dangerous-national-parks-in-america/
It looks like Death Valley is up there, but not the highest, due to motor vehicle accidents. This makes sense since going to death valley ends up just being a lot of time in the car.
There are no entrance stations in Death Valley. There’s a fee, but they sorta “trust you” to have paid in advance.
Rangers can do their best to inform visitors and provide necessary services for survival, but at the end of the day, safety is one’s own responsibility.