Just got back from a solo trip to death valley, just a couple of nights. First morning, camped out in the boonies, broke camp, got in, turned the key and...nothing...at all. Fortunately my SMB has a switch to bypass the battery isolator so all I had to do was press a button and my house battery became the starter battery. Turned the key and it fired up. Popped the hood and it turned out to be a loose negative cable, so not really a crisis but a good reminder of how vulnerable we all are out there alone.
A couple of years ago my wife and I came upon two guys...in Death Valley in a passenger car...on a dirt road with two flat tires. They slept in the car all night. Didn't know enough to put the spare on - that's bad. I helped them put the spare on, tried to fix the other tire but couldn't so I told them to drive slowly toward civilization. They made it.
We always carry a satellite communicator. Recently I was by myself, camping in the snow above Bishop. I parked way out there and went for a ski in unbroken snow all by myself. Beautiful, but it wouldn't have taken much of an injury or equipment failure to lead to real trouble but I was careful and had the Inreach communicator with me.
Since I'm usually alone, I drive with two spare tires plus a couple of repair kits. That way, if I lose one tire, I can stay on the trip. I've lost tires (and wheels) when I only carried one spare and had to break for home. Once, when I broke a wheel, I literally went to every tire shop in a town and they didn't have a wheel that fit our SMB's. Watch out for locking lug nuts - I gave my lug nut key to a tire shop and forgot to get it back and didn't realize it until I was in Death Valley with a bubble on my rear tire. Had to drive 100 miles on that tire, with a spare I couldn't put on, to get a replacement key.
Almost always have 5 to 10 days of water and food with me. Whenever you read about these tragedies, the car is almost always found first. So, yes, stay with the vehicle. If you're in a caravan of six off road vehicles with 10 guys, getting stuck or breaking down is the fun part you talk about around the campfire. Travelling alone changes the calculus enormously.
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