hail, 50mph wind, lightning, 10,900ft. ridge...

I feel like the title explains everything, but here's the story.

This past week i have had a geology field class. We camped for the week near the top of Alta ski resort, it was so much fun. We each made a geologic map and two cross sections, basically we hiked around all day looking for different rock layers and faults.

Thursday rolls around, my partner and i decided to hike with another group of two to the top of sugarloaf peak, about 11,000ft. While hiking up we went around the backside of the mountain for an easier hike, had some lunch and finally arrived at the saddle between sugarloaf and another peak called devils castle. During this hike the sky had become overcast, but we didnt see anything that looked really threatening so we kept going. We made a measurement or two, but the basin had dense fog in it, we had wanted to observe a few things from a distance so we were a little disappointed.

By this time we decided that it may be a smart idea to get off the mountain, so we started going down back to the saddle, after no more than five steps all of the fog in the basin was blown out and five seconds after that the wind totally picked up and had a little bit of hail. By the time i got my rain jacket out of my backpack the hail had picked up and was coming at us sideways, at least 50mph winds. The only thing that could have made our incredibly exposed situation worse was... lighting!!

Yep, lightning starts up. Now the fastest way off the mountain was down the face, my group thought it looked too hard and wanted to go down the way we came up. Me being kind of experienced with stuff like this knew that was a stupid idea. I convinced our group that the face was the best way to go. We got off the ridge as fast as we could, but the hail was coming at us so fast that we couldn't walk into it, it really stung our legs. So we hid in a small patch of bushes twenty feet below the ridge. Now one of the members of our group was wearing flip flops, and his "rain coat" was a cotton sweatshirt, genius! So as we were hiding there he was having a panic attack, kinda. He started to shake pretty bad because he was cold, my partner gets out her emergency blanket so we can cover him up. This next part is my favorite. Someone says, "isn't that going to attract lighting?" So i hold it over my head and let it go, didn't throw it or anything, just let it go. It flew out of my hand and up over the ridge, it disappeared so fast, thats how strong the wind was, it must have disapparated (harry potter term).

We said a fast prayer, i couldn't even hear it. So i just said in my heart, "bless us not to die." HAHA, we felt a lot more comfortable though. By this time the dorky kid is absolutly freezing! About ten minutes had gone by just laying there. We get out a plastic poncho this time. I unfold it and put it over him to keep him from getting wet. This next part is my least favorite part of the story. I realize that this kid needs to warm up fast so he doesn't get hypothermia, so i had to cuddle with him, i was big spoon... anywho, he got a lot warmer. The hail died down for a split second and someone said, "should we try and go down now?" We all thought it felt right, low and behold the trail i had been telling them about was ten feet away. We got on it and ran/slid down the mountain in at least an inch of hail balls! Lighting striking around us.

We got lower on the mountain and felt a little bit relieved, but instead of hail it was rain, we were soaked by the time we got back to camp. When we arrived most of the groups were already back and sitting in the vans with the heaters on. We threw on some dry clothes and joined them. Our ordeal was over, and we totally had the best survival story, which is the best part about going through something like that. Other kids would talk about how they got out of the storm and all i had to say was, "at least you didn't have to cuddle up to a guy so he wouldn't get hypothermia!" haha.

Then we all drove down to snowbird to work on some stuff in the lodge and by the time we drove back to our camp there wasn't even a cloud in the sky. It was one of the prettiest evenings i have ever seen! That evening we found a little over an inch of water in our bowls that we had left on the camp table, meaning that it rained over an inch in three hours! Looking back i wasn't too worried about getting down safely, unlike the kid in flip flops, but it was definitely exciting! After it was over i said to my partner, "at least you will have a cool story to tell your husband!" HAHA

The End.

ps dear chinese people, stop making spam comments on my blog, kthxbye.