Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Thunderstorms on Whitney?

I'm planning my second attempt to Whitney with a solo day hike on July 25.
Now that snow is no longer an issue, thunderstorms are.
I did not make it the first time to the summit. We turned back at Trail Crest partly due to a dark cloud moving in, partly because I was suffering pretty badly from my AMS.
I'll keep my pace steady and slow this time, see where I can go. But I am not familiar with what would happen with a thunderstorm.
I read the Freedom of the Hills book, with some warnings about lightning strikes, about how to crunch on the ground with insulation beneath...
Is there any other major problem I'm missing other than the lightnings?
Thunderstorms in Whitney comes and goes fast, right? If I see a cloud coming in, can I wait it out rather than retreat?
Safety is my first concern, don't want to be toasted. But still want to get to the summit this try.
Appreciate any advice. Thank you.

Start early. Like at midnight or at 2:00 a.m. My preferences.

or...

Give yourself a 1:00 p.m. cutoff time if your start around 4:00 a.m. Clouds "usually" gather energy during that time. Sometimes, t-storms form earlier.

Keep in mind, lightning can travel as far as 30 miles.

Riding the storm out...good REO Speedwagon song, but you may riding for a while.

DON'T GO IN THE SUMMIT HUT DURING A STORM! "Microwave" possibilities...not good.

Best advice I ever got was "beware of puffy clouds when on the mountain."

We will be in the area on July 25. Look forward to hearing of your summit!

Good luck.

Have fun.

Polis, nowhere is really safe but you absolutely want to be off the summit and the ridge between the summit and Trail Crest if there's any chance of lightning. That's where the heaviest lightning activity usually takes place.

If all else fails and you're stuck in an exposed or dangerous area in a lightning storm, get far away from any metal objects (trekking poles) and squat on your pack to reduce your contact with the rock (an overlooked conductor of electricity). Do not seek shelter under a rock overhang or ledge, despite the sense of comfort this might give - again, rock conducts quite well. Same reason you don't want to be in the summit hut. Well, that, and the metal roof!

One of the problems with spotting T-storms is the closer you get to the Sierra Crest the harder the are to see until look at Mt. Hitchcock from Trail Crest.

Here's another piece of advice. If Whitney covers up at Noon the day before your hike, make plans to be off the summit a couple hours prior to the time it was covered. This isn't a guarantee electricity will not be a problem but it minimizes it.

I've gotten T-stormed at early as 8 AM in the Sierra.

You are on the Whitney summit and notice, late in the game, that a storm is moving in rapidly. You could make a run to try to get well below Trail Crest, but chances are that you will end up somewhere in the middle of a 14,000' ridge. Then there's the Hut. But you know that people have died in there -- of lightning strikes!

Then you start thinking. The safest place to be in a lightning storm is a Faraday cage. Most have used cars as a crude approximation. Yes, you want to be in a metal box. Why? Because it is made from a good conductor. It cannot sustain an electric field inside. That means there is no way for current to flow through you. That's what you want! Now, the Hut looks attractive. It has a metal roof and has numerous lightning rods and grounding straps. It has been fixed up a lot since that accident. Maybe it is not the worst place to be after all.

We had a great discussion on the WPS Board on this subject back in the summer of 2007. It got removed for reasons that are rather murky (to me). We took the subject up on Richard Piotrowski's message board in September of that year. The problem is that the board died. I have a lot of the posts and may resurrect them.

Meanwhile, here is a post of mine on Richard's board from September 25, 2007.

WARNING: The chances of being struck by lightning are small but the chances of dying of old age while reading this post are greater than they should be. :oops:

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lightning safety expert. I will cite facts, express opinions, and quote the opinions of others, including experts. But no one should make a life or death decision based on posts by a stranger on an Internet Message Board. I hope that the information presented here, my sources, and the reasoning behind my opinions are helpful. Ultimately, however, people must make their own decisions.

The danger posed by lightning is a familiar topic on hiking and mountaineering-related message boards. In the case of Mt. Whitney, being both the highest peak in the Lower 48 and accessible to large numbers of people guarantees that discussions of lightning danger occur regularly. Indeed, there have been several such discussions on the Whitney Portal Store Message Board over its few years of existence. One of these threads began on or around September 9 of this year. A vigorous discussion sprang up rapidly. Unfortunately, the thread was deleted entirely on September 11. I managed to recover most of it over the next few days, thanks to cached copies of portions on Google. I will not reproduce it in its entirety, but I found it useful to proceed in the spirit of that discussion and I will quote from it in places. I also thank Bob K for our conversations, both in that deleted thread and later on in private. I will not reproduce our discussion either, but it helped my thinking immensely.

The thread in question was started by Icystair, who posted:
Ah, yes! The question of what to do if caught on the summit of Whitney in a thunderstorm is complicated by the presence of the Smithsonian Hut. On the one hand, it looks for all the world like a secure refuge. Even a casual inspection reveals an impressive grounding system. On the other hand, in 1990 a person was killed by lightning while in the hut and there is a dire warning on the hut. As quoted in Icystair's post:
So there we have it. Right there on the Whitney summit is an attractive refuge from the elements, yet we are told not to use it in a common emergency situation. No wonder discussions of the subject are never-ending!

I replied to Icystair's initial post with this:
I think that is a sensible answer. Assuming that the grounding system is not just there for show, the Hut is obviously a much better refuge than it was prior to 1990. Nevertheless, given that a death in the Hut resulted in a $1.7M legal judgment against the USFS, it is hardly surprising that people are not encouraged to use the Hut. But that sheds no light on the question of whether or not the Hut is the safest refuge in the event of lightning.

Ken made a very reasonable reply to the posts quoted above. Ken, by the way, is a retired physician and the source of much wisdom on these boards.
The last line is important. We should know that it is best to avoid being on the summit of Whitney in a thunderstorm. In other words, if a storm is moving in while you are ascending, head down rather than proceeding. That takes maturity and discipline, but it could save your life.

But what if...? Let's face it -- most of us are capable of making mistakes, and the weather on the Sierra Crest can change suddenly. Suppose we misjudge and find ourselves on the summit of the highest peak in the Continental US in the middle of a lightning storm? Ken's post can't help us. What to do?

The answer provided by several posters in the thread in question was to descend as fast and far as possible. The further below the summit you go, the less chance of getting hit by lightning. On reflection, I decided that I would not follow that advice. I don't like it any more now than I did when participating in a similar thread on the WPS Board back in 2003. (More on that thread below.) My comments led to a lively exchange with the posters favoring rapid descent. I tentatively favored taking refuge in the Hut. At one point, a poster said:
To which I replied:
My reply was quite serious. I have never seen a lightning safety expert advocate a long walk/run high on a ridge in order to escape nearby lightning. Why are non-experts ready to advocate that approach but not ready to consider possibility that the Hut is safe? The answer, of course, is the aforementioned warning posted on the Hut. I found myself wanting to know if the Hut is safe, but I started with the question of whether or not running is really better than sitting out a storm in even an "unsafe" Hut?

Here's the problem: Suppose that one descends from Whitney in the direction of Trail Crest. (The Mountaineer's Route offers a much more rapid descent, but is not a viable option for the vast majority of people who might be stuck on the summit in a thunderstorm.) Trail Crest is within a thousand feet of the summit in elevation. It is a couple of miles away along the Sierra Crest. Lightning does not strike only the Whitney summit or the very top of the ridge. Running towards Trail Crest and down the 97 switchbacks, or down the JMT, involves exposure to a potential lightning strike for an awfully long time. To me, it represents Russian Roulette. Admittedly, this version has better odds than the game played with a 6 shot revolver -- the odds of being hit by lightning while scurrying along the trail in a thunderstorm are still not very high. But one must still acknowledge a very dangerous situation. How do those odds compare to ones odds in the Hut?

I did offer another alternative. Suppose that there was no Hut. I think we all agree that staying in the open on the summit is suicidal. But one could descend and look for protection ASAP. There is much information and advice out there from experts on what constitutes protection, what position to assume (no, it's not the "kiss your ass goodbye" position), etc. (You don't want to be in a shallow cave or right up against a rock, you don't want to be lying down, and so on.) I will not try to cover this option here in detail, as it is too large a subject for this post. Suffice it to way that it might make a lot more sense (it does to me!) than a long walk/run in the open trying to reach lower elevations.

In the end, I concluded that I liked the Hut option the best, the "seek protection below the summit" option next, and the "run long and hard" option the least. And I've been a distance runner for over 40 years!

Before discussing the Hut in detail, let's consider lightning danger in general. I posted the following in the deleted WPS Board thread:
Clearly, the lightning danger in the Hut at the time of the 1990 accident was the large currents resulting from a strike, rather than the strike itself. In order to assess the Hut, let's begin by considering the earlier statement that typical lightning rod protection of ordinary structures works 93% of the time. That statement applies to a single lightning rod on a wooden house. It tells us nothing whatsoever about how well the extensive grounding system on the Hut works. Here is a picture I took of the Hut in August, 2005.



One can clearly see the metal roof, 7 of the 9 lightning rods protruding from the roof, and thick cables running from the roof the ground. One can see 7 cables -- there are evidently about 12 on the entire perimeter of the Hut. The metal shutters on the windows are connected to the cables. In addition, the Hut has a wooden floor that was not present at the time of the 1990 accident.

It was stated above that "It is impractical to build most structures with absolute protection from lightning." The closest thing to absolute protection would involve a metal roof, metal walls, and a metal floor -- a Faraday cage. The system on the Smithsonian Hut is surely a better approximation to that ideal than one commonly encounters at home. The roof, window covers, and cables are basically an equipotential structure. There has to be a much greater than 93% probability that this system will absorb and dissipate a lightning strike. Without the grounding system, one could easily imagine significant potential differences between points on the walls or along the dirt floor, possibly resulting in large currents that could be fatal to a person in the wrong place inside. In the present configuration, there does not appear to be any way to sustain a substantial potential difference between any visible parts of this structure.

Despite the appearance of safety, I sought expert opinion on the subject. In searching for more information, I came across a line in the resume of a lightning safety expert who designed a grounding system for the Smithsonian Hut in 1987. (I am not using his name in this post as I do not have his permission. I am seeking it but did not want to delay this post any further.) I contacted this man and we carried on an excellent conversation via e-mail. Before discussing those exchanges, I will comment on the motivation for a grounding system and the timing of its installation.

As reported in the Los Angeles Times in 1994, there were lightning injuries in the Hut in 1985. 1987, 1988, and 1989. The LA Times article is reprinted here (see Richard's post on 7/28/03). The Forest Service obviously realized after the first of these accidents that the Hut needed a grounding system, since the aforementioned design dates back to 1987. However, no system was implemented prior to the death of Matthew E. Nordbrock on July 14, 1990. As reported in the LA Times article, Nordbrock "was one of 13 hikers who had sought shelter from the downpour by ducking inside of an old stone hut at the summit of the mountain...Less than a minute later, lightning struck the hut, and a surging electrical charge threw Nordbrock several feet. He was removed from the mountain by helicopter and died a short time later."

In the ensuing lawsuit, the presiding judge awarded $700,000 to Nordbrock's family and $1M to three other hikers injured that day. He wrote that "Despite repeated incidents and despite the knowledge that a dangerous and potentially life-threatening condition existed, (the government) failed to erect any signs or other warnings concerning the hut and its dangers during the five years preceding this accident." The Nordbrock family's attorney said that "All they needed to do was spend $50 and put a sign out there which warns hikers to avoid the hut in the event of rain." That must have been obvious to all concerned. According to that LA Times article, "a warning sign had been placed on July 15, 1990, the day after the accident."

The expert I contacted did not know about the outcome of the lawsuit or any work on the Hut after 1987. However, after examining my photo (see above), he told me:
I emphasize that this was a response to my inquiry, not a note to the public to disregard common sense advice about staying away from the summit if a storm is approaching, etc. I see it as the opinion of a knowledgeable expert stating what is obvious to at least some non-experts.

Following the disappearance of the WPS board thread, I looked over some old threads dealing with the subject. In the one that contained the LA Times article cited above, I found this comment from Bob R:
So there we have it. Bob R. said basically everything I have to say and he said it 4 years ago.

I can add one further insight into the warning sign and general lack of encouragement for regarding the Hut as a refuge. In an article on legal issues associated with lightning protection, Dr. Ronald Standler, a layer with a PhD in physics (whom I did not contact in connection with this post) states that, given the litigious climate in the US, structures that offer incomplete protection (which he identifies as structure lacking metal roof, walls, and floor) should carry warning signs (basically what I said in my initial reply to Icystair).

I hope that I have added some useful information. I certainly want to emphasize the paragraph of Bob's that I italicized (see also my original disclaimer). I am not going to make life and death decisions for anyone else. I certainly know what I would do in the situation under discussion and why I would do it. However, I do not intend to ever actually do this experiment! For one thing, I could show up at the door and find the Hut full (evidently part of Mr. Nordbrock's problem).

Giving Bob R the last word:

I am really glad you finally reposted all that information, Alan.

Since those posts were written, a scout troop was hit by lightning in Sandy Meadow, July 28, 2005. The strike instantly killed a scout leader and a second scout died later. A third was injured, but I don't know the outcome. Sandy Meadow is four miles west of Mt. Whitney on the JMT. The scouts were among trees, and took shelter from an afternoon thunderstorm when they were hit. Sandy Meadow is approximately 10,500 feet elevation.

I have read a number of reports on the message boards from people being on the Whitney crest, and hearing the rocks -- and even their hiking poles -- emitting a hissing noise. It is a common occurrence, I believe, when lightning strike potential is high. It is literally a hair-raising experience.

Several years ago, there was a post on wpsmb about a hiker being lightly hit, and he hiked down, but his feet or hands were still tingling from the strike.

Very interesting read Alan - thanks for re-posting. All in all, I think Bob's final analysis is the most logical - the chance of being struck by lightning is extremely low, especially if common sense is activated. People however naturally fret over ths prospect, especially with as much attention as it gets in the Whitney permit flyers, web info, etc.

Going high into the Sierra, or any other backcountry destination, entails varying degrees of real danger. I guess if you want to be super-safe, you pack up a heavy rubber bivy . . .

In any field or endeavor, some person will always stand out.

This poor guy probably started the "Kick Me" sign-on-the-back rage. Struck by lightning for the 7th time, then come to your senses staring at a bear. Jeez . . .

I am struck by the coincidence of Ken's post on the WPSMB, in skunkpack's Sierra High Trail topic. Ken links to the Sierra Crest Route book, in which there is a John Muir quote:

"...Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand."

My good friend and drinking buddy "booger" encountered that scout group earlier in the day, and pointed them toward Sandy Meadow as a great place to camp. He is haunted by those two deaths. A couple of the scouts went back three years later, in a memorial gesture, and he accompanied them. Poignant.

I was talking with RJ Secor a few years ago, and he showed me a small spot on the palm of his hand. He said he had been struck by lightning the previous weekend. He was in a chute somewhere, maybe Baldy. The strike bowled him head over heels a couple of times.

All this has gotten my relays clacking again. I believe I'll wander up there tomorrow. NOAA predicts a 30% chance of thunderstorms starting midday, and my timing will put me on the summit about then. Of course, I'll be alert to the conditions, and turn back or hunker down for a while if it seems prudent.

This is from yesterday. They don't know whether it was the lightning or the fall that killed him. Some of the other climbers had "minor burns".

The Mountaineers' Route involves some rock climbing while the main trail is, well, just a trail. However, the steepness of the MR means that one spends less time above 14,000 feet, less time exposed to the wind, and less time acting as a lightning rod. It's also shorter and, in my experience, a faster route. I'm planning my first attempt at a "double" next week. I'll use the MR for both trips up and at least the first trip down.

Changing the subject a little, I was on a four-day Williamson-Tyndall-Keith trip back in 1989. The do-do hit the fan just as we finished Tyndall. I got bored lying in my tent at the pothole, so I put on rain gear and headed for Keith. The storm weakened as I gained more elevation. I was probably more lucky than smart, but the fireworks were over by the time I got to 13,000 feet. I had beautiful weather on the summit, and made it back to camp just before dark.

Bob, you and Jack just slay me with these doubles!Jack did a MT double last week while we were out there, took a day off, then went for a quick summmit single to relieve the boredom of the day. Number 90 I believe. I'm still shaking my head. Unless I'm mistaken, Betsy has 45 summits. They're both absolutely amazing - and exceptional people too.

Re the Grand Teton rescue, Ken just posted a full account in another thread (A different kind of SAR).

Somehow it went right over my head that the 2003 WPSMB lightning thread was resurrected here. Unfortunately, the 2007 thread got nuked.

Adding to this thread...

From another thread: Is the Mt. Whitney Shelter usually open

the following 1990 LA Times article was linked: Hikers Find Death, Terror at Summit of Mt. Whitney

well , to protect your tent from the lighting you can groung a rod just a few feet away from your tent and make sure that it is higher than the tent.