BOOM. I jolted upright as the walls of the tent exploded with another violent flash of light. Rain pounded at the walls and the thin fabric strained precariously under torrents of wind. An ear-splitting crash ripped through my chest.
Flash. I started counting. One… two… three… BOOM. Flash. One, two, three, Flash, one, t-FLASH.
I had experienced many thunderstorms while camping, but not like this. I was assigned to Marcy for five days, and I had chosen to spend the second night at the Phelps campsite, the last camping area on the Van Hoevenberg trail up Marcy.
The lightning strobed through my tent once every five to ten seconds, followed instantly by deafening roars of thunder. It was surreal. How was this much lightning even possible?
Thunder reached my ears from different directions with varying intensity – the confluence of two storms.
Another gust of wind pushed the sides of the tent so far inwards I feared it would collapse. I thought I heard a tree snap, but the deafening assault of rain made any chance of knowing impossible.
I wasn’t cold, but I was shaking. My mind raced back to trip-leading days, when I told kids to get in a lightning position in their tents. I had never been in a situation where it felt as necessary as that moment.
I sat up, and made sure I was completely on the foam sleeping pad beneath me. I drew my legs towards my chest and placed one hand under each knee.
Images of all the articles I had read saying how ineffective this was flooded my head. The general consensus is that the only way to be “safe” from lightning is to get in a car or vehicle as quickly as possible.
Were they all right? Probably. For all I knew this was completely useless, but what could it hurt. I was miles from any indoor structure, and there was an apocalypse going on outside the paper-thin walls I called a shelter.
As I attempted to evade gravity and minimize all contact with the ground, the storm showed no signs of forgiveness.
Impossibly, the thunder intensified.
BOOM.
The world was underwater. I could barely breathe, the air was thick. I wondered vaguely why everything was so quiet. Where had the thunder gone? I tried to open my eyes to see, only to realize they were already open. I became aware of a strange sensation in my legs, the kind that happens to your foot after sitting on it too long. Fear flooded into me as I realized I couldn’t see or hear. The world was nothing more than darkness, silence, and tingling.
It took me a moment to remember what happened.
A crash of thunder had hit my ears so hard that the world fell mute. Instantaneously a sharp tingling pain shot up my legs and into my hands. Spots swam in front of my eyes, and then my vision went black.
Was I still breathing?
For a few terrifying moments I wondered what I would do in the morning if my senses didn’t come back. Sit on the trail until someone found me? Try to radio to Dispatch and hope I could feel the radio vibrate in response? How would I know it was morning?
I was in an alternative reality. The deep soundwaves of thunder coursed through me, but I couldn’t hear a sound. It was oddly peaceful. I wondered at the juxtaposition of chaos and serenity.
I don’t know how long this lasted. My guess is just a few minutes, but they were slow, sticky, molasses minutes. Fear makes the perception of time notoriously deceptive.
Thankfully, the world came back. I have never felt so much relief to hear rain. The roaring sounds of the storm returned, and the spots faded from my eyes.
Did that really just happen?
I took a breath in just to make sure my lungs still worked, then tentatively began to access how much I’d been hurt. The pain had not been intense, and I rationalized that it must have been ground current or a side splash from a strike somewhere nearby.
I was incredibly lucky. It was a mild jolt, like one from a electrical socket. Other than the temporary hearing and vision loss, I seemed intact. No smoking clothes or oddly shaped scars.
I remained upright, but my body ached and my head was going fuzzy. I knew I shouldn’t lay back down, but the floodgate of adrenaline had worn off. The human body can only be hyper-alert for so long, and now my blood had turned to lead and my brain was full of sludge. As the crashing continued overhead, I concluded that there were worse ways to go and tried to get some sleep.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, I was slightly surprised to still have a pulse.
I expected the world outside my tent to be a scene of mass destruction. Surely trees would be down in every direction, perhaps a massive scorched mark where the lightning had struck – smoke billowing up from black ground.
The sound of the zipper punctuated my thoughts as the fabric of the tent fell away to reveal the damage.
Sunshine smacked me in the face, and I gazed in disbelief at the pillars of light streaming through the branches. Birds sang cheerily, and water droplets flashed rainbows as they hung delicately from spruce needles.
Dumbstruck, my eyes searched in desperation for any evidence of the storm. Save a few downed branches and the saturated ground, the chaos had vanished without a trace. If this were a crime scene, the lightening would have gotten off scot-free.
I stumbled out in a daze, still amazed that my legs worked enough to stumble. Nature is certainly more resilient than me.
In the light of day, the events of the night before were easier to put in perspective.
Saying I got struck by lightning seemed a bit dramatic. Lightening is a force of immense power – 10,000,000,000 watts – and there I was living and breathing without so much as lingering pain or any special superpowers.
A more direct strike can stop your heart, and leave your body smoking with third degree burns. Even side-splashes and ground-currents can be strong enough to put you in cardiac or respiratory arrest, and the heat and electricity can cause a lifetime of brain damage.
That’s why at the first sign of an approaching thunderstorm you will find a Summit Steward making a record-breaking dash to tree-line – followed by a trail of alarmed hikers who decided it was best to follow suit.
On days when severe weather is forecasted, I ensure that I am not above tree-line when the storm hits. I stand at the last junction below the tree tops and educate hikers about both the fragile plants and the hazards of lightning.
After feeling what just a mild current is capable of, I take warning hikers seriously. I have always possessed a healthy dose of respect for the hot bolts of electricity, but like everyone else figured it would never happen to me.
I do get it, it’s heartbreaking to turn around under a mile from your destination. Especially after hiking seven miles, and knowing that if you wait the storm out you will be hiking out in the dark.
Yet when continuing on means compromising safety, and the safety of those who would be called to rescue you (or recover your body), it is time to turn around. The mountains are going to be there when you come back, and having the humility to accept that is the mark of an experienced hiker. The reality is that the backcountry can be a dangerous place, and help is not immediately available.
Now there is always that guy (and yes, it is usually a guy) who insists I am over-reacting and that the chances of being struck by lightning are one in a million.
Well, I can attest from personal experience that the chances are high enough. In the Adirondacks, more people have been injured by lightning than have been injured by bears, and your odds increase significantly when you remove the shelter of a building and place yourself on the highest point in New York State.
Be smart and minimize your risk of being exposed to a lightning strike. Check the weather up until the moment you leave, and pay attention to the sky as you’re gaining elevation. If you hear thunder, get to shelter if you can, wait it out in a low area, or turn around. It’s not worth it.
I did not expect to find myself in such a powerful storm that night, and I’m not sure if I would have done anything differently. The monotone weather voice had forecasted the familiar “slight chance of thunderstorms after midnight, some storms may be severe”.
No kidding.
It does happen. We find ourselves in dangerous situations in the backcountry, and it is an inherent risk we all take when we leave the safeguards of society behind.
In a way danger and risk are essential parts of a wilderness experience. Hikers must accept that they are in a world outside of human control, beyond safety nets and guardrails. Self-reliance is a raw, fundamental feeling that many outdoor adventurers crave. Yet part of self-reliance is mitigating risk. Just like you lock your car in a parking lot, hikers should take precautions against bad situations, and have the capability to respond if they happen.
Not summiting a peak during a thunderstorm is a fantastic start.
As another steward once muttered to me in agonized exasperation:
“I don’t know what hikers think they are going to see on top of a mountain during a thunderstorm anyway”.
