Nah, they'll be fine, well, fine-ish. The cops will see someone walking with a pack and arrest them for vagrancy before they can get into too much trouble from the elements.
But for real, I know next to nothing about this sort of thing and even I know 1. Do not fuck around with mountains 2. Do NOT fuck around with desert.
Oh, and one more thing: You're not walking to Mordor, you're walking through Mordor. There's next to no water, the water that's there is poison, the temperature swings wildly between extremes, and most of the humanoids you'll come across will get angry and violent if they see you
There's next to no water, the water that's there is poison, the temperature swings wildly between extremes, and most of the humanoids you'll come across will get angry and violent if they see you
Going through that part of the country for the first time was wild to me because until you're there it doesn't occur to you that there is no shade anywhere. Even in an air conditioned car you will still be uncomfortably warm because the sun will be beating down on you for the entirety of daylight. I can't even begin to imagine hiking through that, I'd be experiencing heatstroke within an hour.
Yeh. The walk to Mordor was much more hospitable than trekking across the American West.
I want to say that Mordor proper was actually pretty fertile agricultural land and that's why Sauron was able to project so much power - He had a very strong industrial and agricultural base to operate from.