The Short Odyssey Of The French Family In New Mexico

Europeans hiking in the American West sometimes misjudge the climate, and themselves:

That heat claimed the lives of a French couple hiking the undulating dunes of the Alkali Flat Trail with their 9-year-old son. The mother and father were both overcome by the temperature and died of heat-related illness, collapsing at different points along the trail, the local sheriff said.

The mother turned back when she didn't feel well and died on her way to the car. Unaware she had collapsed, the father and son continued on -- but the man, too, became disoriented and then died with the boy at his side, Otero County Sheriff Benny House said.

Though dehydrated, the boy survived. But he might not have made it were it not for a sheriff's deputy who was first called to help the child's mother.

The biggest problems with Europeans have been Germans with romantic notions of walking across Death Valley in summer. Not. Going. To. Happen. Easy to misjudge water needs.

Another common problem is misjudging sunset. Without city lights it gets dark fast. On 4 separate occasions (this happens to me a lot) I nearly got trapped in the boonies overnight.

Then, it's easy to misjudge distance too. As Jonathan notes: "Without a lot of reference objects like trees or buildings, that 'Hill' that looks 5 or 6 miles away could in fact be a small mountain, 20 or 30 miles away. No wonder living there makes you bat shit crazy!"

As Jerry notes: "It's part of something more general -- call it "National Park Syndrome" -- in which people seem to think that, because they're in a park, nothing bad can happen to them. If these folks had come across a similar area, but unnamed, they would have shuddered at the thought of trying to walk across it. The presence of signs bearing the National Park logo somehow defuses the horror."

Jerry adds: "According to the article, they had only gone 1.5 miles when they ran out of water, having drunk 40 fluid ounces. Walking 1.5 miles to one's car without water in 101-degree heat sounds like it should be survivable."

It's a bit mysterious. It may be they started off in a dehydrated state. Perhaps they were encumbered by altitude issues.