The sun and heat are harsh in the summer, and shade is nowhere to be found. But from all over, people come to admire the otherworldly beauty of the wave-like white dunes and to hike a trail marked only by posts staked deep in the gypsum sand.
Hikers at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico are warned about the desert conditions and advised to take many precautions. In the summer, those include drinking lots of water -- a gallon a day is recommended -- and resting frequently. Temperatures often top 100 degrees.
That heat claimed the lives of a French couple hiking the undulating dunes of the Alkali Flat Trail with their 9-year-old son. The mother and father were both overcome by the temperature and died of heat-related illness, collapsing at different points along the trail, the local sheriff said.
The mother turned back when she didn't feel well and died on her way to the car. Unaware she had collapsed, the father and son continued on -- but the man, too, became disoriented and then died with the boy at his side, Otero County Sheriff Benny House said.
Though dehydrated, the boy survived. But he might not have made it were it not for a sheriff's deputy who was first called to help the child's mother.
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