Death Valley can be quite beautiful in the spring, especially after a rainy winter.

https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/wildflower-seasons.htm

They disappeared at the end of July.

The threshold for warning people of danger in modern society is so low that people become desensitized.

I mean, if you go to Death Valley from the California side you've already been told you have, like, a million cancer exposures.

At Valley of Fire, 30-60 minutes from Las Vegas, there's a hike with a permanent sign at the beginning no matter the season/weather saying:

"HEAT WARNING. Hiking is not recommended."

This is despite the park recommending the hike on their map/brochure and at the visitor centre...

Obviously it gets hot there and being close to Vegas means people show up in jeans and with poor wayfinding skills. But I do wonder if the sign dissuades no one but desensitises others. Bit of a balancing act trying to adequately warn people who pay little attention, but keep it as the wild experience people want to have.

Yeah, that sign is stupid. In the right time of year it's perfectly reasonable to hike. In the hot time you would have to be insane--but the sign doesn't distinguish between those cases.

Because of pervasive ass-covering in the kinds of organizations responsible for this kind of messaging and infantilization of people just in general they just put a "pls don't do the thing you're here to do" sign that everyone will ignore rather than an informative sign and "make your own decision" that might actually help a few people think twice about doing something actually dumb.

Even in the heat, it's not a particularly long hike. Morning or evening wouldn't be an issue. That said, it's not like the majority of tourists show up early!

The people who need the signs aren't the ones who are paying attention to conditions. I never head out without either checking the weather myself or knowing that a person whose judgment I trust has checked the weather.

Just drove down CA 50 this morning in all the snow, and a good portion of road signs is out of whack: 55mph limit signs are a joke when you have the mandatory chains on, 35mph yellow signs are a joke in the summer, seems like they are trying to come up with some "average" values safe all-year-round despite winter and summer conditions being complete opposites.

Australian parks have hike grades, indicated on trailheads.

I guess they should not scrimp on signage and put more explicit descriptions, such as "if you can't run half a marathon under X hours or don't have Y liters of water per person you will likely die".

I think people tune this out though because it often feels like overkill for the season/weather or something else. Obviously the weather changes or the exposure is different once you're out there. But it won't stop people tuning it out. The signposted hike in question is very, very tame, maybe 1.5km.

I like the per-trail signage idea. Broader things like 4L/day recommendations aren't going to seem realistic for many people. Or education around over-provisioning water: added weight makes for more exercise, and means you're not miserly rationing water and hating the hike.

I read an interview with a US park ranger. They said people walk right up to the edge of canyons to get a gander. Like they're at home watching TV. Makes the rangers cringe.

It's like they think the canyon was engineered by Disney amusement park engineers to be safe and normie-proof. Surely they wouldn't open a canyon attraction without first engineering the cliff to never collapse, right? If there's no guardrail, that must mean it's safe.

people are idiots. every year people die in the park because they know better than the rangers and go out when it’s 130 without water or a hat

By summer the name is quite appropriate. In the winter it can be a nice, albeit stark, place to visit.

There's an entire series of books titled "Death in ..." for US national parks, each one detailing incidents where people (not always tourists) ended up dead because they didn't take the risks seriously. https://longreads.com/2022/11/15/death-in-national-parks/