Heat warning for US hikers amid rescues and deaths

A woman hiking in Southern California has become the latest person to die on a trail as the United States experiences intense summer heat.

San Diego police said the body of Diem Le Nguyen, 50, was found Monday about a quarter mile (400 meters) from the Black Mountain courthouse, hours after she called for help to pedestrians. long distance said that she was “extremely hot and feisty”. need water”.

Her death follows several in Colorado and Arizona this month, and several near-fatal incidents around the country, as it struggled under a “heat dome” and some areas of road Common corrosion peaks at 114F (about 46C).

In Colorado, Marsha Cook of Iowa collapsed and died on June 10 while attempting a “moderately steep” hike to the Colorado National Monument.

In Sedona, Arizona, a 44-year-old Pennsylvania woman collapsed and died of heat exhaustion on June 14 while hiking with her husband and two daughters.

Two days later, a 41-year-old man died on the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon.

Although officials have not confirmed his death was heat-related, the National Park Service has advised against hiking below the rim of the Grand Canyon during extreme heat warnings.

The warning comes after another California hiker was discovered 10 days later lost in a landscape altered by recent wildfires.

Lukas McClish, 34, said he survived on wild berries and water he collected in his boots after getting lost near Santa Cruz.

According to the US National Park Service, hiking in extreme heat can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke, hyperthermia and hyponatremia. All are potentially fatal.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1,700 people will die from heat-related causes in the US in 2022.

Experts say even the most experienced hikers can make mistakes and need to be rescued quickly in the scorching heat.

“Hiking during the summer months is dangerous, especially when it’s very hot,” San Diego Police Lt. Dan Meyer said Monday.

“Even if you take all available precautions, there’s still a chance you could end up in a situation you don’t want to be in.”

Descending into canyons and deserts also carries the added risk of “temperature inversion” – a phenomenon where lower areas are often significantly hotter than the higher areas where hikers depart.

Isaac Sanchez, of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire), told BBC News that the agency regularly responds to heat-related illnesses suffered by hikers in remote locations. Right.

Heat-related emergencies on hiking trails are “a very, very common rescue” for rescue teams in the San Diego area, Sanchez said.

One of the most common and dangerous mistakes hikers make is not bringing enough water, Sanchez said.

Despite its weight, “we’d like to see people carry gallons.”

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? We’d rather have too much water than not enough, because we don’t know what will happen later in the day.”

In the outdoors, “being well prepared is a good thing.”

CalFire said hikers shouldn’t be ashamed to call for help — failing to do so risks them getting lost more and getting sicker.

“The important thing is, no matter how experienced and prepared we are, sometimes we still find ourselves in situations that we cannot get out of without help,” Sanchez said.

With reporting by Max Matza