My scariest mountaineering experience

westanimas · Post by **westanimas** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:05 pm

I have always been careful about thunderstorms. I have been hiking and climbing mountains since I was 3 years old, and my rule *was* always "off the peak by 11am."

So back in 2000, I was going up Engineer Mtn, near Durango. I summitted at 10am, and it was about 40% cloudy. No big deal, no thunder, lots of sunshine. I was eating my pb&j, when 10 minutes later I saw the smallest, most pathetic lightning strike off to the west behind Lizard Head. Ok- time to go down!

Not 500 feet off the peak, in full daylight and happy sunshine, a solid bank of clouds swung around the mountain below me. Five minutes later I was descending in a complete fog. Then I thought I heard water somewhere under the rocks (common occurrence, you know.) I thought, I'm way up this isolated peak, it's way to high for the water table to be up here. It sounded like when you spill a drink on a carpet, and the drink slowly soaks in. Then I realized it was a popping sound, and that it was static. Oh S**T!!

Not five minutes after the thunder started, there was cloud-to-cloud lighning all around me. Twice it struck horizontally through the air about 10 feet in front of me, and the third time it struck not four feet above my head. I got zapped through the rivets in my boots, and burnt down my face where my glasses were. The third strike burnt saliva from my mouth with a pop! sound. I learned that a bolt of lighning is slightly larger than a human wrist, and that it has millions of little hairs that come off of it in all directions.

So after 20+ years of mountaineering experience, and summitting a peak at 10 am, I finally had my shot at the pure statistics. This was the scariest experience in my life (second only to losing brakes on the west side of Wolf Creek Pass while hauling lumber.) And would you believe it, every year there is always someone who pokes fun at me because I'm so paranoid about the weather.

ps- third option for the poll "rate of columnous cloud growth."

cheeseburglar · Post by **cheeseburglar** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:51 pm

I take it this was before you got your nose ring and tongue piercing and thus cancelled these operations?

westanimas · Post by **westanimas** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:00 pm

Haha, that's too funny! Incidentally, I got my first tatoo a year later.

Scott Rogers · Post by **Scott Rogers** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:03 pm

Incredible story! I'm glad you made it out intact. Lightning can be very scary, but I've definitely never had that close of an encounter.

zruffert · Post by **zruffert** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:08 pm

Time to start playing the lottery?

thebeave7 · Post by **thebeave7** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:12 pm

My scariest day, though it doesn't involve lightning.
Eric

westanimas · Post by **westanimas** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:26 pm

Yikes! That would scare the hell out of me, seeing a friend fall like that.

JQDivide · Post by **JQDivide** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 4:16 pm

I grew up in the South and love thunderstroms.
But, about seven years ago I was visiting a friend in Oklahoma and was standing 15 feet away from a tree that was struck. That was a scary awesome experience. Sparks and bark filled the air. Me and dog picked our selves off the ground and ran inside.

When I was a fishing guide, one of the guys from the shop got struck trying to row out of a storm. The lighting hit the botton on his ball cap and flashed over him. The lady in the back of drift boat had her stomach burned from the flash.

I am fearfully aware of what weather can do. Watch the clouds.

mtgirl · Post by **mtgirl** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 4:46 pm

Two experiences come to mind, and they happened within 10 days of eachother quite a few years ago....

1. Being face to face (about 7-10 feet away) from a mountain lion who stalked up on me while trying to take shelter and wait out rain/thunder/lightning on the Incline in Manitou Springs.

2. Getting stuck between K2 and Capitol with an approaching lightning storm. I was climbing with a few more experienced friends years ago and I had no business on Capitol (too inexperienced, fear of heights at the time, and broke my hand 10 days earlier......from situation #1 above). I got part of the way across the knife edge when fear and panic sunk in. I decided to wait it out between the knife edge and K2, while the others went for the summit, and I'd wait for them to return, so we could descend together. In the meantime, here comes the storm and I had nowhere to go - was still too shaken up to attempt to cross K2 alone. My friends came back from summitting, and the electricity was so close that one friend's hair was standing straight up. I knew we had to get out of there, but my lack of experience and complete fear made it a slow process. I learned A LOT of hard lessons that day....

kb466 · Post by **kb466** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:06 pm

I had a very frightening experience with lightning years ago on Culebra. My climbing partner and I climbed it from the east side and as we reached the summit, a previously unseen storm rolled up over us from the San Luis Valley side. We knew we were in trouble when our hair literally started standing on end (mine was much longer then). The rocks started to buzz. We got about ten yards off the summit and made ourselves as flat as possible. It seemed like everytime we raised our heads, our hair would stand up. I seem to remember the rocks buzzing to a crescendo of sorts till lightning struck on one of the ridges or summits, then it would start all over again. It struck a couple of times very close to us, but we could not raise our heads to look. After about fifteen or twenty minutes, the storm blew on over to where we were no longer in a fog and we felt safe enough to move. Move we did--but to the summit to quickly sign the register then down off the mountain as quickly as we could. I have been very wary of potential storms on mountains since then.

westanimas · Post by **westanimas** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:14 pm

JQDivide wrote:I am fearfully aware of what weather can do. Watch the clouds.

Yes, weather is one of the most amazing natural phenomenons. I have to admit although my experience has made me paranoid as heck of the weather, my interest in watching it has really grown.

westanimas · Post by **westanimas** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:18 pm

mtgirl wrote:Two experiences come to mind, and they happened within 10 days of eachother quite a few years ago....

That is incredible that those things happened so close to eachother. Mountain lion are known for being pretty reclusive, but they have been adapting better and better to the human interface in recent years. Almost becoming brazen. I heard a story last summer of two lions that followed a park ranger for nearly five miles on a trail outside Leadville. He even got to throwing rocks at them, and they persisted.

Although, I would biasedly (!) still think that experiencing static on a peak with no option to bail out is much more of a terrifying experience! Yikes!

My scariest mountaineering experience

What do you think is the best indication of a developing electrical storm?

My scariest mountaineering experience

14ers.com

Social

Mobile App