When Lightning Strikes at Rocky Mountain National Park

We had a bit of a rocky adventure at Rocky Mountain National Park — all due to our own negligence might I add. The story I’m about to recount was the single most terrifying experience of my life up until this point. Even just writing about it now, I can feel that same panic as clearly as if I were back on that mountain. This experience could easily have ended up fatal, and I wish I could say it was our intellect that saved us, but it was probably more just dumb luck.

Let’s begin.

This was the day we were finally going to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. As the nation’s 5th most visited national park, with over 4 million visitors a year, we were beyond excited to be included in that list. Even though Ethan had been to Colorado many times and even hiked multiple peaks, he had never been to Rocky Mountain National Park, so it was a first for many of us.

The night before, we secured our permit for Bear Lake. This area is very popular, so to limit overpopulation in the area during the busy summer months, there is a timed entry permit system. This is essentially free, might be a dollar or two, but it’s primarily just to keep the area from getting crowded.

Either way, we got a late start and didn’t arrive at the park until the early afternoon (just skimming the end of our entry time). The parking lot by the lake is often full, so there’s a shuttle service that takes visitors from a lower lot up to the final destination. However, we decided to test our luck by driving all the way up and hoping for an available spot. Well, we lucked out and found an empty spot that we quickly pulled into. We unloaded ourselves like a clown car at the circus, put on our hiking boots, swung on our packs and headed for the trails.

Bear Lake is just a stone’s throw away from the parking lot. It’s a very small, but beautiful lake. There’s a fairly flat trail that loops around it, but that was not what we came to do. We admired the lake briefly but headed on down the trail following the arrows that pointed us along the Flat Top Mountain Trail, veering a hard left up the switchbacks at the fork in the path. If you’ve read Summiting Grizzly Peak, a previous blog post of mine, you’d know that I was not adjusting well to the elevation of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. While this hike shouldn’t have been particularly hard, just a constant gradual incline, it was kicking my butt.

I owned my spot at the back of the pack, desperately holding on to the fact that being in the back is cool sometimes: school buses, rollercoasters — that’s all I could come up with. Sometimes someone would drop back and walk with me when they needed a break or thought I was getting lonely. I wish I could say I handled the hike with grace, but at this point it was hot, I had a blister the size of a quarter on my heel that rubbed with every step and I was not enjoying it at all. The hardest part was admitting that I wasn’t enjoying it. We had barely gone a mile up the trail and, embarrassedly, I wondered if I was even going to make it.

Then we heard the rumble of thunder.

We had seen the clouds rolling in when we were at the trailhead but hoped it might just breeze by or kill the heat for a bit, but when the thunder got louder, it was a unanimous decision to turn back around. As an electrical engineer, Ethan knows a thing or two about electricity, and if he says it’s time to turn around, I’m not one to question him.

In our casual haste, we stopped to enjoy the view from an overlook. Most of the trail was surrounded by trees and we couldn’t see much of the surrounding scenery at all. This break in the foliage exposing the miles of mountainscape in the distance was the single most enjoyable moment of our time in the national park. But it was short-lived.

It didn’t take us long to make it back down to a fork in the path. One way would lead us back down to the parking lot, and the other would take us down Bierstadt Lake Trail. Looking at the sky, we didn’t see any storm clouds anymore. Most of the group at this point was disappointed we had turned around at all. This unsatisfied feeling of having bailed on a trail for the first time ever knawed at us and sent us carelessly wandering down a new trail, heading further away from the parking lot and unknowingly into the heart of the storm.

We figured this would be a quick loop around the lake and then back to the parking lot. However, a mile or so into the Bierstadt Lake Trail, we realized the storm clouds were not only back, but they were coming in fast. The first gut feelings of panic began to fester in all of us. Ethan pulled out the map and we began making a game plan. At this point, we were closer to the park and ride at the end of the Bierstadt Lake Trail, the same one we had passed on early that afternoon. If we could manage to get there, we figured we could hop on the next shuttle back to our car. However, that was heading in the direction of the brewing storm.

Our other option was to run back up the mountain to the parking lot from which we came, but that was several miles away. We figured we had a better shot at making it to the park and ride before the storm made its way above us, so we hurried quickly further down the path towards the storm. The grumble of thunder was now a roar, and counting the seconds between the flash and thunder put it only a few miles away….that is, if our method had been correct.

We had been counting each second in between as a mile, a trick I thought had been correct since I was a child. But I was wrong. When counting we had believed the storm to be a mile or two away yet — one mile for every second. The correct estimate would be for every five seconds, the storm would be one mile away. Essentially, count the seconds between the flash and rumble, then divide by five: that is how many miles away the storm is. So, in this case, the storm was already on top of us. Without wanting to take another step toward the storm, we all turned around and began sprinting back up the trail.

Simultaneously, thunder would crack and the sky would go bright. I could feel the vibrations rattle my rib cage with each bolt. The roar was deafening in my ears, like standing in the front row at a metal concert. I truly believed in this moment I was going to die. The fear was not translating into adrenaline, and my feet dragged heavily as I tried desperately to run back up the mountain toward the parking lot. Like every child’s nightmare of being left behind in the grocery store because your feet won’t move was coming to fruition at the worst possible moment. This feeling of impending doom was the most deeply terrified I have ever been in my life. Sitting here now in the comfort of my apartment, I can still feel that terror building up in my throat, welling in my eyes.

For short moments, the leaders of the pack would pause for the rest to regroup. At some points when we felt outrunning the storm was impossible, we contemplated assuming the lightning position and hoping for the best. But we hurried on, desperate to find shelter in our vehicle as soon as possible. We took turns sprinting through areas of low tree cover, making sure we all made it through alright.

We passed a family of four heading towards the storm, carefree with two young girls leading the way. Bewildered by their ignorance, I urged the parents to turn around, they were heading directly into a lightning storm. They seemed unphased, and my pleas only seemed to slow their pace, but they did not turn around.

The sky had remained shockingly dry throughout all of this, with no rain, not a drop. We finally made it to the fork in the path that we so wrongly chose to continue down instead of heading back to the car. We wouldn’t make the same mistake again. However, this time, the sky burst open. On a hot sunny day in the middle of August, hail began pelting us in the heads, sliding behind our glasses and tripping us like marbles. For some odd reason, this almost seemed to calm us. Hysterically, we began to laugh and our pace slowed to a brisk walk. My heart rate crept back down and the ball in my throat began to dissipate.

However, Ethan kept the level of urgency high — we weren’t out of the woods yet.

We passed by Bear Lake, sunny and blue when we had first seen it, now gray and speckled with ripples from the rain and hail. While the rest of our group felt like we were in the clear now, Ethan was still running, which meant so was I. We didn’t stop until we were in the car with the doors shut. Luckily, everyone made it to the car alright and we were able to enjoy the rest of our time in the park from a much lower elevation with shelter close by.

It might sound overdramatized, but this easily could have been a fatal experience. After this event, I decided I wanted to be more prepared in case we found ourselves in a similar position in the future, so I looked into some lightning safety tips. Here’s what I found:

Lightning Safety Tips:

1. Know before you go. Check the weather forecast, or understand the typical weather patterns for where you’re heading. Had we done our research, we would have known storms typically roll in through the mountains during the afternoon. This would have given us the foresight to plan ahead and hike in the morning.
2. Know the signs. There are some tell-tale signs that you are in the path of a lightning strike. If your hair starts to stand on end or your skin begins to tingle, you’ll want to seek shelter immediately. If you can’t get to a safe space, the next best thing to do is squat low to the ground balancing on the balls of your feet. This shrinks you down and minimizes your contact with the ground.
3. Understand the science of lightning. Lightning is an electrical discharge triggered by an imbalance between the atmosphere and the ground. While lightning is looking for the closest connection to try to neutralize both regions, it doesn’t always strike the tallest thing in the area. In fact, it can also strike multiple locations with the same blast, even as far as 10 miles apart.
4. DO NOT SIT UNDER A TREE. While lightning doesn’t always strike the tallest thing in the area, it usually does and that’s often a tree. So, hypothetically, you might think hiding under a tree would keep you safe because it wouldn’t strike you then, right? Wrong. Kinda. If lightning does strike the tree you are under, you could indirectly be struck by lightning from a “ground charge” that spread out from the tree in all directions.
5. DO NOT LIE DOWN. As noted in #2, you’ll want to squat low to the ground on the balls of your feet to minimize contact with the ground. Laying flat on the ground actually makes you more vulnerable as there are more points for you to be struck.
6. Stay clear of metal. While metal might not necessarily attract lightning, it does conduct electricity, so standing near a metal fence, even if it was struck miles away, could electrocute you.

I hope you can go out on your next adventure and keep these tips in mind. It’s always best to be prepared, especially when adventuring in an area that is unfamiliar to you. Needless to say, when lightning strikes at Rocky Mountain National Park, you’d better hope you aren’t at the summit. Know before you go, hike prepared.