The view shortly after we began descending down the south side of Muir Pass.
Highlights of Day 15
- Survived a freakishly intense electrical storm/white-out blizzard*
- Crossed Muir Pass
- Saw the famous Muir Monster, and sat on “recliner” chair made from rock slabs
- Had our only fire of the whole trip (to dry out our soaking wet shoes & socks)
*It should be noted that this white-out blizzard occurred in the middle of July, and looked like it came out of nowhere. The lesson we learned? Be prepared for any kind of weather when you’re in the mountains.
Trail Journal
We awoke early to cross over Muir Pass–the first of our tall southerly passes. The weather was pretty bad yesterday, & we were stuck waiting out the thunderstorms.
It rained most of the night last night, but stopped in the early morning & the clouds cleared off. Feeling bolstered, Gadget and I set off at 7 am with clear skies ahead. There was the hint of a wisp of cloud, but nothing to be concerned about. The ranger we’d chatted with the day before said the forecast was good, and the morning sky seemed to confirm that. We planned to be up the pass and back down to trees (about 7-10 miles of exposure) well before 11 am, when the earliest of the common afternoon Sierra thunderstorms tend to brew.
All was well at first, but we soon noticed clouds beginning to gather and darken over the mountains. It should be noted that we were already above treeline at this point, so we decided to pick up the pace in case they turned into a storm later in the day.
We began hiking as quickly as we could, and were making excellent time–the fastest hiking of our entire trip so far, I think.
The storm amassing in the distance, about a half hour before it unleashed its full fury on us.
The clouds continued to build and darken and amass themselves over the surrounding mountains. At one point Gadget asked if we should stop & see what the clouds decided to do, but we were already well into the 7-10 miles of exposure (no trees/protective cover cover) that characterizes either side of Muir Pass, and we didn’t want to be sitting ducks waiting for the storm. We still thought we’d have time to make it up and over the pass before the storm hit, so we continued on double-time, concerned about the thick grey clouds that had begun to creep down the mountain walls.
We were navigating our way along the narrow narrow shores of Lake Wanda when the storm slammed into us. The grey clouds that had been creeping their way down the mountains opened up with a torrent of hail, and the wind picked up almost from nowhere and turned the placid Lake Wanda into a mass of choppy steel waves that threatened to overtake the narrow trail between the lake and the granite slope.
Lightening soon followed; bolt after bolt, all seeming to originate from the cloud around us and striking the various ridges and mountains surrounding the lake, and us. The thunder exploded simultaneously with each flash of lightening. It was right on top of us.
If you’ve never been to Lake Wanda, let me tell you that it is surrounded by a whole lot of rocks and nothing. There’s not a single tree for miles in any direction, and no shelter of any kind. All-in-all, pretty much one of the worse places to be in a lightning storm.
Lake Wanda and the impending storm, shortly before it struck.
At this point Gadget and I threw our metal hiking poles and our packs, which have metal frames, down on the few feet of earth next to the trail, and ran as quickly as we could back down the trail towards an area that I remembered as being slightly depressed near some (small) granite outcroppings.
We sought refuge in the dip between three small granite mounds, and assumed the “lightning position,” crouched on the balls of our feet some distance from each other so that if one of us was struck, the other wouldn’t be hit as well.
The hail quickly turned into a driving snow that seemed to rush nearly horizontally through the sky, carried by the brutally whipping wind. My rain gear quickly soaked through, despite having weathered many other storms just fine, and the chill began sinking down to my bones. I tried to keep my hands (which quickly lost sensation) and body moving, but every time I’d move another bolt of lightning would strike nearby and I cowered once more in the snow and the wet patch of grass I’d found between a field of granite rocks. (Rocks conduct lightning through the cracks, so you don’t want to be on it during a lightning storm.) Gadget was crouched over on a tiny bed of clovers.
I remember looking into Gadget’s eyes at one point, telling her I was frightened, and telling her I love her. The storm was ripping at the air and the earth around us, and there we were, crouched in the open, wet to the skin and quickly becoming hypothermic, in the middle of the clouds and the lightening and the cold and the snow and one lightning strike away from death.
Perhaps it sounds over-dramatic in the retelling, but honestly we were probably some of the best conductors around, and I think it is a minor–or perhaps a major–miracle that neither of us was struck.
So, so happy to be alive (and re-united with our packs and hiking poles) after the storm. You can still see a bit of the snow in this photo, though most of it had melted already.
I never want to recite the CPR guidelines again to my loved one, thinking that at any moment one of us may have to use it on the other.
I never want to experience that terror and helplessness again.
That is the most frightening, terrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life.
I still keep thanking everyone I beseeched during those 45 minutes that the electrical storm lasted–family members who have passed away, god, mother earth, father sky, universe, weather spirits, allah–for sparing us. That’s what it feels like–that we were spared. Granted, we responded as well as well as we could have in that scenario–our reaction was basically text book–but so much of it was really completely out of our hands.
I don’t know if I described it to any degree of justice. I’m still so close to it that it’s hard to write about the experience. Suffice it to say, it was terrifying and I’m still shaken up.
Today someone told us they talked to another hiker who had looked it up on google (they must’ve gotten service on one of the passes), and allegedly it was a freak storm related to a monsoon. I’ll do more research when we get back, but I certainly believe it was a freak storm.
The top of Muir Pass. This is a survival hut that several hikers took shelter in during the storm.
Day 15 of the JMT: Photo Gallery
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