Heat warning for US hikers amid rescues and deaths

A woman hiking in Southern California has become the latest fatality on a hiking trail as the U.S. experiences a period of intense summer heat.

San Diego police said the body of 50-year-old Diem Le Nguyen was found about 1,300 feet off the Black Mountain Trail on Monday, just hours after she made a 911 call to other hikers saying she was “extremely hot and needed water.”

Her death follows several fatalities in Colorado and Arizona this month, as well as a series of near-fatal accidents across the country as people suffer from a “heat dome” with temperatures reaching as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius) in some popular hiking areas.

In Colorado, Marsha Cook of Iowa collapsed and died on June 10 while attempting to complete the “moderate to steep” hiking trail to 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 no heat-related cause of death has been officially confirmed, the National Park Service recommends not hiking below the rim of the Grand Canyon during a heat warning.

The warnings come after another California hiker was discovered 10 days after becoming lost in a landscape altered by recent wildfires.

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

Hiking in extreme heat can cause heat exhaustion, heat stroke, hyperthermia, and hyponatremia, according to the U.S. National Park Service. All of these symptoms are potentially fatal.

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

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

According to officials, Ms. Nguyen got lost during a group hike on Sunday in temperatures of up to 35 degrees Celsius.

She continued on her way after the group she was with, which included around 100 family members and friends, turned back at around 8 a.m. local time. About two hours later, she called her family and said she was struggling with the heat and desperately needed water.

San Diego police Officer Dan Meyer said she almost made it to safety before collapsing.

“It was a quarter mile from a settlement, from a road,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“She almost made it.”

“Hiking in the summer months is dangerous, especially when it is very hot,” Meyer said Monday.

“Even if you take every precaution at your disposal, there is still a chance that you could end up in a situation you don’t want to be in.”

When descending into canyons and deserts, there is also the risk of a “temperature inversion,” a phenomenon in which lower-lying areas remain significantly warmer than the higher-lying areas to which hikers are heading.

Isaac Sanchez of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) told BBC News that the agency often responds to heat-related illnesses among hikers in remote areas.

Mr. Sanchez said heat-related emergencies on hiking trails are “a very, very common type of rescue” for emergency responders in the San Diego area.

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

Despite the weight, “we want to see people hauling gallons.”

“Prevention is better than cure, right? We’d rather have too much water than too little because we don’t know what will happen later in the day.”

In the great outdoors, “being over-prepared is a good thing.”

According to CalFire, hikers should not be ashamed to call for help, otherwise they risk getting lost more often and becoming even sicker.

“Ultimately, no matter how experienced and prepared we are, sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we cannot get out of without help,” says Sanchez.

With reporting by Max Matza