Self-immolation
A piece of advice. Don’t go for a hike in extremely hot weather. If you do, take as much water as you can carry and don’t go far. If you don’t take much water and you do go far…well, you won’t come back.
A 56-year-old woman died while hiking near a state park in southwestern Utah over the weekend after running out of water on a sweltering day, police said.
Emergency crews responded near Quail Creek State Park on Sunday to a report of a hiker “in distress due to not having enough water and the temperature being 106 degrees,” the Hurricane City Police Department said in a statement.
Too hot. If you don’t have enough water, turn back after 10 minutes.
Three hikers died in state and national parks in Utah over the previous weekend, including a father and daughter from Wisconsin who got lost on a strenuous hike in Canyonlands National Park in triple-digit temperatures.
Don’t do strenuous hikes in triple-digit temperatures.
Use your brain.
One time I made the mistake of not bringing enough water on a hike, but even that was just on a dry 90-degree day and only about an eight-mile trail, so I made it through fine but it was a little nerve wracking and I haven’t made that mistake since.
Nerve-racking and horribly uncomfortable I should think.
Years ago in my student days, I went on a hitchhiking tour through the western plains of New South Wales with a friend who was a student aeronautical engineer. We picked up a lift with two old-timers. One of them, whose name was Charlie, had spent a lot of time carrying his swag ‘on the track’ and looking for work (he was a sheep-shearer by trade; name of Charlie.) Three times in all he had been dying of thirst, unable to walk or even stand, when he was found; and thus survived to tell the tale.
He knew by heart a poem by the immortal Henry Lawson (see link below) on the topic of death by thirst in the Outback, and recited it with great fervour. It was the story of his own life.
https://www.ironbarkresources.com/henrylawson/OutBack.html