According to a National Park Service news release, the 42-year-old Belgian tourist was taking a short walk Saturday in the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in 123-degree heat when he either broke or lost his flip-flops, putting his feet into direct contact with the desert ground. The result: third-degree burns.
“The skin was melted off his foot,” said Death Valley National Park Service Ranger Gia Ponce. “The ground can be much hotter — 170, 180 [degrees]. Sometimes up into the 200 range.”
Unable to get out on his own and in extreme pain, the man and his family recruited other park visitors to help; together, the group carried him to the sand dunes parking lot, where park rangers assessed his injuries.
Though they wanted a helicopter to fly him out, helicopters can’t generate enough lift to fly in the heat-thinned air over the hottest parts of Death Valley, officials said. So park rangers summoned an ambulance that took him to higher ground, where it was a cooler 109 degrees and he could then be flown out.
the Mojave Rattler, Mojave Sidwinder Rattler, and Panamint Rattler all can be found there.
There’s other venomous snakes, too, on that list. It’s not a place you want to go about in sandals. not. at. all. There’s also plenty of nasty spiders and scorpions, too. (to be fair, there’s basically scorpions everywhere. except like. the artic)
Huh. There being scorpions everywhere except the Arctic is such a wild statement to your average European. Never have I ever seen a scorpion outside a terrarium despite having traveled and hiked extensively in various countries around the continent.
Are they truly that common in the Americas, even in more temperate climates?
They’re that common basically everywhere, actually.
The UK has yellow tailed scorpions from southern Europe; and with climate change spreading a lot. Northern Europe is still close enough to the artic to give them difficulties; but there’s other species that are smaller that are just hard to find.
There’s also tons of pseudoscorpids that lack the tail (and are tiny,)
