Danger, danger: Utah's rugged terrain invites disaster when you're not fit and prepared

He estimates half of all avalanche fatalities involve people who didn't know anything about the danger and just bumbled into it. The other half are fairly experienced people who ventured into avalanche-prone areas anyway.

Know your limits

In any part of the wilderness, preventing injury and death starts with knowing your limitations and abilities, Mower said.

"If you're out of shape, you don't want to take a strenuous hike — that's when you're more likely to get injured," he said.

Brent McGinn, spokesman for Bryce Canyon National Park, said he believes dehydration is the No. 1 problem at Bryce.

"Most visitors who get into trouble have hydration issues," he said.

Bryce, which has about 1.5 million visitors a year, is in a high-altitude desert with low humidity, where a person's health, or "Achilles' heel," likely will be revealed sooner. The park averages almost 15 rescues a year, incidents McGinn said could have been avoided if some of those hikers had remained hydrated.

Being unfamiliar with the area is the main safety shortfall most visitors to the Arches/Canyonlands areas have, according to Grand County Sheriff James Nyland.

"When people come to visit, they need to check and know the area they are traveling to," he said. "They aren't inquiring."

If Zion National Park is their destination, hikers need to know about Angels Landing, statistically the No. 1 single location for fatalities in Zion.

"Strenuous. Long drop-offs and narrow trails. Not for anyone fearful of heights," the official Zion National Park guide states about Angels Landing, a pinnacle towering over the park's Virgin River.

Sky, water and sand

And there's nothing like a bolt of lightning to make an instant angel out of any hiker. In particular, lightning is considered a prime danger on "Utah's roof," the High Uintas, where summits range from about 10,000 feet to 13,528 feet above sea level.

A Scoutmaster was killed by a bolt while hiking near King's Peak, Utah's highest point, in 1997. There have been a total of seven lightning deaths in the High Uintas since such fatality records began being kept in 1954. Since that time, lightning has killed 60 people throughout all of Utah, making it Utah's second-most deadly weather-related killer, behind avalanches.

In Utah's watery wilderness, many people are not wearing life jackets while on the water — or they don't know not to swim behind a houseboat, an activity that has been the cause in deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning, according to Mower.