Hikers survive hair-raising close call at 10,000 feet

‘we needed to get out of there’

By Jeremy Weber

Daily Inter Lake

Standing at 10,000 feet as the sky turned dark and the hail began falling, hikers Toni Braig and Nathan Burke knew they were in trouble.

Avid backpackers out for a Fourth of July hike, the pair had started up the unnamed peak near Storm Lake in the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness under clear, sunny afternoon skies. But as is often the case at high elevations, that changed quickly.

The blue skies rapidly filled with dark clouds, followed by hail and rain. Then the thunder came.

With the summit only a few hundred tantalizing feet away, the duo decided to press on to the top before making their descent.

“We agreed that if we saw any lightning, we would turn around and go down the mountain, but we stupidly kept going,” said Braig, formerly of Kalispell and now a Missoula resident. “Before we even reached the peak, I was feeling overwhelmed — this scared feeling of unease and discomfort. I started crying, but we were so close to the top that we just kept going.”

Braig’s unease continued to grow as they approached the summit. The thunder continued to rumble, but there was no lightning in sight.

Then the buzzing started.

A low persistent hum crescendoed into a deafening buzz. The hood of Braig’s raincoat began to hover above her head as her hair stood on end. Then comprehension dawned — she and Burke were literally standing in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“Nathan raised his arm and the buzzing got louder. I asked him to do it again so I could pinpoint where the sound was coming from. I took out my phone to take a photo, but it shocked me as soon as I touched it. Then we heard a huge, thunderous boom. It was then that we realized we were in the middle of an electrical storm — we needed to get out of there.”

Braig and Burke were in real danger of becoming a statistic. According to the National Weather Service, over the past 10 years, an average of 26 people are struck and killed by lighting in the United States each year. While the majority of those deaths happen in coastal states such as Florida, Texas, Louisiana and South Carolina, mountainous states are also prone to lightning strikes. When population is taken into consideration, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico are all in the top 10 in annual lightning deaths per capita. Montana experiences an average of 308,166 lightning strikes per year and one lightning death every two years.

According to Meteorologist and Lightning Safety Specialist John Jensenius, Braig and Burke were standing in one of the worst places they could find themselves during a thunderstorm.

“Typically, what happens in a thunderstorm is that charges build up in the cloud while opposite charges build up on the ground. The signs that they experienced — the buzzing sound, the hair standing on end and the shock from the phone — are all signs of a very strong electrical field building up on the ground beneath them,” he said. “Those signs usually mean that lightning is going to strike in the immediate area very soon.”

Jensenius, who also serves on the National Lightning Safety Council, sais lightning can strike a person in one of five ways. Direct strikes are not the most common, but they are probably the most deadly.

Side flashes occur when lightning strikes an object near a person and the current jumps to the victim. A person generally has to be within a few feet of the strike to be hit by a side flash, meaning victims usually include those who have taken shelter under a tree to avoid rain or hail.

Ground current, the most common cause of lightning deaths and injury, occurs when the electrical charge from a lightning strike spreads out across the ground in the immediate area of a strike.

Conduction deaths and injuries occur when the electrical charge from a lightning strike travels along a conductor, such as wires or metal surfaces. This is the leading cause of lightning deaths that occur inside buildings.

The final type of lightning strike is the least common, but is deadly nonetheless. Streamers are strong electrical charges that build up on the ground during a thunderstorm in response to the electrical charge building up in the clouds. As the charges build, the streamers “reach up” from the ground attempting to make contact with an opposite charge, called a stepped leader, descending from the cloud at a speed of up to 200,000 miles per hour. When the two meet, it can unleash a return stroke — what people generally refer to as a lightning bolt — a charged stream no wider than a human thumb that is five times hotter than the surface of the sun and can carry as many as 100 million volts of electricity. Those caught in streamers do not have to be struck by the return stroke itself; when the lightning occurs, all of the streamers in the area discharge at once.

On top of the mountain, with thunder continuing to crash around them, Braig and Burke did the only thing they could think of — get as low to the ground as possible and quickly make their way down to the valley below.

“We were 10,000 feet in the air and there was no cover, so we didn’t have any idea what to do,” Braig said. “Growing up in Kalispell, I have been taught a lot about outdoor safety and bear safety, but when it comes to lightning strikes I had no idea what to do.”

Jensenius said the couple did the right thing, but probably should have never put themselves in such a dangerous situation to begin with.

“The best thing they could have done was to get to a lower elevation as quickly as possible where there are some trees. You don’t want to be the tallest thing around,” he said. “When it comes down to it, though, there is nothing you can do to prevent being stuck if that stepped leader came down directly above you, but being completely exposed on the top of a mountain is about the worst place you can be in a thunderstorm.”

As for what they experienced on the mountain top, Jensenius thinks they were most likely caught up in streamers.

“What they experienced could have been either ground current or streamers, but since they never saw a flash of any kind, they probably got caught up in streamers,” he said. “It could have easily been a lot worse. Obviously, they made some bad decisions along the way, but they didn’t take a direct strike. If that had happened, they would definitely have known about it.”

For those looking to venture to the mountain tops in the summertime, Jensenius has a few words of advice.

“Thunderstorms tend to form over high peaks in the afternoon and they can form very quickly. The recommendation would always be to listen to the forecast and, if it calls for lightning, consider canceling or postponing your activity to another day,” he said. “Any climb should be completed by noon to avoid afternoon thunderstorms. At that altitude with no cover, you simply can’t get to a safe place. It’s not a situation you want to find yourself caught in.”

Braig and Burke said they were just glad to have made it back to safety.

“We have laughed about it and figure we were lucky,” Braig said. “It just happened so fast. One minute the sun was shining and it was beautiful and the next we were in the middle of a thunderstorm. This has taught me to listen to my gut. If my body feels like something is wrong, I should pay attention to that.”

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Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.