Are you taking the plane – whose emissions are a major contributor to climate change – in hopes of experiencing a heat record in your flesh? This is not the least of the paradoxes California is experiencing right now. Death Valley on the Nevada border is used to hot summers, but this year the Mojave Desert is burning below records, attracting a handful of extreme tourists.
49, 50, 51, 52… As confusing as it sounds, several dozen people, some even dressed in fur coats, gathered on their cell phones at a place called Furnace Creek, around a thermometer in Valley National Park, on Sunday. immortalized Insane Temperatures Show. In fact, since their neurons haven’t fully melted in the sun, they only travel a short distance outside to take a selfie in the oven before escaping to an air-conditioned vehicle.
“It means you made it”
On Sunday, the official mercury temperature in the Furnace Creek area reached 53.3°C, which holds the all-time world temperature record of 56.6°C in July 1913. However, the highest scientifically reliable temperature comes from the summer of 2021: 54.4 °C.
In the Washington Post, William Cadwallader, who lives not far away in Las Vegas, a city particularly used to high temperatures, explains that he has been traveling to the Mojave region for years, simply for the pleasure of telling that he visit the hottest place on the planet. “It’s like Mount Everest, which means you did it,” he says.
Every July, the Badwater Basin Ultramarathon – a hollow in Death Valley – attracts crazy runners eager to cross the desert in the height of summer. The start of this extreme 217km race is 85m below sea level, with an arrival at Mount Whitney at an altitude of 2,548m. Temperatures often exceed 50°C along the way. “It’s hot but the scenery is beautiful,” said Guardian Josh Miller, a scalded visitor from Indianapolis.
“An air dryer that comes back to us”
On Friday, the American press agency AP discovered a German jogger who was happy to be able to romp around in the desert. “I wasn’t that hot, but my body was working really hard to cool me down,” said Daniel Jusehus, holding up a photo of a thermometer that read 48.8C. However, in reality, physical activity can make the heat even more unbearable, exhaust the organism or even lead to death, as this weekend in Italy where players died during football matches. Especially since the rocks, the sand and the ground show extreme temperatures even after sunset.
In total, more than a million people visit Death Valley National Park every year, with around 200,000 coming in June, July and August. American broadcaster ABC met with Alessia Dempster, who had traveled from Scotland to experience the experience: “When there’s a breeze, she said, you’d think it would give us a little relief from the heat, but we really feel as if an air dryer came in the face again.
Signs on the national park trails warn against going down into the valley after 10am. Extreme enthusiasts are still tempted to explore under cover. And while rangers patrol in the summer to help motorists in distress, there’s no guarantee that lost tourists will get help in time. In early July, a 65-year-old San Diego man was found dead in his vehicle.