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Dinesh's Mid-Summer Death Valley Walk (1998)

https://dineshdesai.info/dv/photos.html
53•wonger_•6h ago

Comments

anadem•6h ago
Interesting that they didn't find the nights too cold for sleeping out. We camped in Racetrack Playa one spring some years back and the nights were bitterly cold with extreme wind.
1024core•5h ago
This was done in Summer, not spring. I'd imagine summer nights wouldn't be as cold as Spring nights...
rafram•3h ago
Desert wind is crazy in the spring. It’s a shame because spring is the most beautiful season there, by far. Just a bit hard to sleep in the gale.
neilv•5h ago
Up until a few years ago, I could've seen doing this as a worthwhile survival exercise, and to know that I can do it.

Then, without trying, I overheated simply by exercising in a room that I didn't know was 95F.

(Since I've mostly only lived in cold/moderate climates, and had never learned how risky 95F is.)

It was highly unpleasant, in an uh-oh, I can see how people die this way, kind of way.

Now, I actively avoid anywhere much hotter than about 80F.

Just last week, I declined a very interesting recruiting outreach from a CEO in Austin, telling him, sorry, but the weather in Texas is just too hot for me.

I'm ready to repurpose the term "special snowflake".

> A young woman seems to be walking around in a daze. [...] I don't think they believed their guidebooks about how uncomfortably hot it can get in Death Valley.

I hope someone helped the dazed person with first aid. And that other people take the heat seriously. It's right there in the name: Death Valley.

JKCalhoun•5h ago
Bike riding in the heat once caused me to come close to overheating. Stopping, finding shade, pouring water over my head and laying down finally brought my core temperature down in time.

I saw the same things begin to happen to my wife some years later when bike riding in the heat. I did the same for her and all was well.

dkarl•5h ago
Your reaction to heat is highly dependent on acclimation. I live in Texas and have to re-acclimate every year. Exercising on the first 85º+ day of the year is miserable, but a month later 85º feels quite tolerable, and 95º is doable, though performance suffers.

I grew up playing baseball and tennis in 95-100º weather with high humidity routinely. It wasn't pleasant, but nobody was getting heatstroke, nobody was cancelling games or practices. But on a visit to Montana a few summers ago, I saw that kids' baseball games had been cancelled because the temperatures had reach a dangerous level: 90º (in dry mountain air.) Same human beings, different levels of acclimation, very different safety thresholds.

I've never been in the temperatures described in this article, though, and I don't know what the physical limits of acclimation are.

readthenotes1•4h ago
The first exercise at 105⁰ seems insane. A week later bearable.

I recall with some amusement thinking I was coming down with heat stroke one summerbecause the light wind felt chilly on my skin. But then I realized it was only 95 degrees

Jtsummers•1h ago
The "trick" I used in GA (not quite as hot as TX, but as humid in that part of GA) was to exercise outside year round. It was rarely so cold that winter running was a problem, and as the temperatures warm up or cool down you naturally get acclimated to the new season. It's worked here in CO as well (though due to an injury I didn't this past winter) with getting used to very cold temperatures (I wouldn't exercise outdoors on our very coldest days, but that's about 1-2 weeks out of the entire winter that I'd stick to indoor only training).
js2•5h ago
What really matters is the wet bulb temp. For example, the Death Valley high today was 114°F (45°C) but at an RH of only 3%. That gives a wet bulb temp of ~ 65°F which isn't a problem with acclimation and adequate hydration.

Now if it had been 50% RH, the web bulb temp would be > 96°F which is not survivable by humans for very long because no amount of sweating in that humidity will cool you down.

lazyasciiart•3h ago
A young couple and their baby and dog died of overheating on a day hike in California a few years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/12/tragic-death...

tbrownaw•3h ago
> Now, I actively avoid anywhere much hotter than about 80F.

It is currently - well after sunset - 82°F outside. A couple days ago it was mid-90s in the afternoon, and it should get back to that after the current weather passes in another few days.

Mowing the yard when it's high 90s and muggy and sunny is not as rare an occurrence as I might like.

bigdict•5h ago
Pairs great with the tale of the Death Valley Germans: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu....
the_arun•5h ago
Nicely written. I liked the Car Talk captions. Would have loved to see larger images though. But I understand this is from 1998.
username223•4h ago
I love it! This was what the ultra marathon community used to be like before it became commercialized and professionalized (https://mattmahoney.net/ultra/, especially the story of Gravel Man https://mattmahoney.net/ultra/death600.txt). Now you can't run 50k without a crew.

EDIT: And this is what a serious amateur can do on that route: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-10/astrophy...

PaulDavisThe1st•1h ago
> Now you can't run 50k without a crew.

Thousands of people run 50k's without a crew every year, worldwide. Maybe even just within the US, even.

Also, Hummels did his traverse in February; TFA is about doing something in July. In Death Valley, that's a world of difference.

desi_ninja•2h ago
Looks like the same guy : https://www.turtletrader.com/dinesh-desai/
pbhowmic•33m ago
That's Death Valley Dinesh!! I just re-heard that episode on "Best of Car Talk"

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Dinesh's Mid-Summer Death Valley Walk (1998)

https://dineshdesai.info/dv/photos.html
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