I do not understand how European tourists keep dying badly and nonsensically in Death Valley. It’s like every year one random French or German guy will go out like a hamster in Death Valley. This is such a geographically beautiful continent and I have never once thought “I want to go to the place where the hottest temperature on earth was recorded!” (Absolutely no offense intended to the Timbisha, I’m sure it is a very geographically beautiful place but not somewhere I want to drive through in a rental car, it seems like a place that requires advanced level strategical planning to visit.) Are there pamphlets advertising Death Valley in every travel agency in Western Europe or someone? Redwoods country, Big Sur, LA, SF, these are all places you go visit on vacation to California and you chose Death Valley???
It's likely because they're going to Burning Man- which is not a place where good decisions tend to take shape. They're likely flying into Las Vegas' Reid Airport and taking Route 95 upward through Death Valley. Unfortunately, Europeans —especially from the melanin-deprived bits— tend to start dropping at 90°/32°, and Death Valley temps in August get up to 115°/46°.
It takes a metric fuckton of advanced strategical planning to go to Burning Man for Americans that don't have to get tourist visas on top of it all. You have to drive car/truck/trailer-loads of food and supplies through the desert (and bring three times as much stuff as you'll use because there's probably gonna be some dumbass that didn't plan ahead and you can't in good conscience let them die). People who are unfamiliar with the terrain might think they can handle the drive on whatever rental car they pick out.
Because—and I say this as an Angeleno-cum-Londoner-cum-Angeleno-again: Europeans lose their goddamn minds in Nevada. It's more heat and sunshine in three days than they see in three months. You can gamble in the supermarket and buy booze damn near anywhere and drink it in the streets. The nearest gun range from LAX is ~25 to 30 miles. From Vegas-Reid? There's six within a half-mile. You can drive a gigantic car very fast over hundreds of miles of road. It's hot like Spain but most everyone speaks English. It's got the casual wine-and-cigs attitude of France but with astounding rock formations they don't usually see in any part of Europe. It's more American than American- it's John Wayne and Easy Rider and all the great and stupid things about this country. Heat + Mid-to-Poor Planning + Manifold Unadvisable-to-Bad Decisions = At least one melanin-deprived European dropping dead per year.
In Scandinavia we struggle not to chuckle mean-spiritedly at stories of people who go to Wisconsin from further south without preparation and almost die because they have no concept of how cold below the freezing point of water works, but I'll have to admit we probably have a similar blind spot about heat that you can't beat just by hydrating and moving slowly at the most extreme.
I think the effects of Las Vegas really should be considered when it comes to people dying in Death Valley.
There's a good chance it's going to be part of the tourism blitz accompanying the whole of Las Vegas' economy. I don't know how late the place stays open since covid, but when I was living there the bars and casinos closed around 6am-7am for cleaning, and every other hour of the day was committed to pumping alcohol into tourists and draining money out of them. The above description of Vegas downplays it if anything. You can buy hard liquor at grocery stores, you can gamble at gas stations. The Vegas airport is the closest commercial airport to Death Valley, and from the second you exit the plane until you leave It's nonstop. Why not try the slots twenty feet from your gate and grab a margarita?
So if you're from Europe and going to Death Valley it's probably from Amsterdam or Frankfurt, London if we throw the UK in. You're drunk, you're losing all your money, and you're used to humidity in the 70% or higher range, and you've flown out during the summer for some godforsaken reason like every other tourist. You don't usually see more sunshine a month than 250hrs at best, and you went from mid-20°C/mid-70°F soupy cloudy air into Vegas with like 30% more sunshine per day with 20% or less humidity in temperatures around 40°C/100°F. Your brain is getting fried inside your skull by the sun, you can't focus through the endless bombardment of sounds, and you're like, "Wow, the heat isn't so bad," because your sweat is evaporating faster than you can make it, you're shrivelling up like a worm on a hot sidewalk but you have no idea and can't think about it.
And then you go to Death Valley because it's a park and you're a tourist and just die not because you weren't ready for the heat by itself but because of everything else in additon to the heat. You might have been prepared but you weren't prepared for how impaired Vegas makes you and how your body keeps telling you the temperature like 10% cooler than it is.
Anyway, at some point if you ever go to Las Vegas someone is going to suggest driving out to LA on a whim - don't do this. Plan a visit but don't let Steve at 2am be like "I know a place" and lock you into a two hour road trip through the mojave.
There's something so quaint about the Americans here going "you can buy alcohol everywhere" like that's alien for Europeans. I assume they lose their mind in Poland where the gas stations will happily sell you vodka and the smallest convenience stores have a wall of hard liquor to choose from.
(I do admit it's different in Scandinavia, which is why so many Baltic ferries are 1000% booze cruise.)
