Differentiating dehydration and heat exhaustion in the backcountry

Thanks for covering this Ryan. In all of miles of hiking, I only recently have experienced heat exhaustion. I am sure it’s possible that I was mildly dehydrated, yet I never stopped sweating profusely. I have been dehydrated and hot countless times while hiking-sitting in the shade, drinking more water, resting always improved things quickly, even when temperatures were high. I never considered the overlap of dehydration and heat exhaustion and it’s impacts. When I decided to bail on this last trip and hike 10 miles back to the truck, I had 4 liters of water and drank nearly all of it, thinking it would help the symptoms, but it did not. It wasn’t until I sat in the air conditioned truck for a few hours that I started to feel better. Took a day for the brain fog to lift as well.

It’s something I will be consciously be aware of now.

Great article!  Hit home with me for sure. Many years ago I started running into this type of problem while on longer backpacking trips and one time on the Long Trail, with my wife, it happened. She is a retired nurse and not only did she make me drink, but also had me take my shirt off and placed a wet bandana around my neck. Within a very short time I was back to normal. Since that time I have done the same thing when by myself (which is most of the time) and your advice to start treating both symptoms at seems to dovetail with what we kind of tripped on by accident. Good information in a digestible format!