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NOLS MythCrushers Episode 3: Lightning

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    • Thanks for the link. Their advice to "not be at the wrong place at the wrong time" is sort of impossible as I've often set up on a mountain top at 4pm in fine weather with clear skies and by 3am a hellstorm arrives. Only one time was it so bad that I unstaked the tent and dragged it and everything in it down the mountain to a lower site. Not fun at night in the rain and flash.

      The best technique I have found is to just tighten up my bunghole and wait to die.

      BTW---here's another technique: (Esp good in the Southeast mountains with trees): Look at campsite trees for lightning score marks---a long vertical strip of bark and wood removed from a tree. This will indicate the place is prone to lightning strikes.

    • last year, i think i was still in tennessee, and i was hiking through a t storm, with lightening flashes, some female section hikers started yelling "assume the lightening position." and they stopped and crouched. i just kept hiking. it wasnt on an exposed ridgeline, so i wasnt too concerned. i have had the hairs stand up on the back of my neck in the whites several times, once in the carters, and twice on franconia ridge.that latter had me a little nervous, just crouched by a rock for a while, then just kept hiking.
      its all good

    • I've hiked a good bit in CT/MA at the end of summer when the college groups are out. One of the funniest things is that they make the kids assume lightning position for the entire time that they can hear thunder, even if it's in the middle of the night. Regardless of the fact that they are usually under the cover of dense forest and nowhere near the highest ground. I shared a very safe campsite with one group during a really bad storm one night in 2011 or 2012, I ended up chatting with one of the group leaders while making coffee the next morning and She was complaining about the rules that the schools made them follow. She told me that they had to force the kids into lightning position under their tarp for almost two hours even though she knew full well that the site we were in was at extremely low risk for lightning strike. Meanwhile I had slept through the whole thing...
      Dogs are excellent judges of character, this fact goes a long way toward explaining why some people don't like being around them.

    • hikerboy wrote:

      last year, i think i was still in tennessee, and i was hiking through a t storm, with lightening flashes, some female section hikers started yelling "assume the lightening position." and they stopped and crouched. i just kept hiking. it wasnt on an exposed ridgeline, so i wasnt too concerned. i have had the hairs stand up on the back of my neck in the whites several times, once in the carters, and twice on franconia ridge.that latter had me a little nervous, just crouched by a rock for a while, then just kept hiking.
      Is that the Tennessee position or stand next to the copper still? Both would appear to make my hair stand up too...
      Be wise enough to walk away from the nonsense around you! :thumbup:

    • Tipi Walter wrote:

      Thanks for the link. Their advice to "not be at the wrong place at the wrong time" is sort of impossible as I've often set up on a mountain top at 4pm in fine weather with clear skies and by 3am a hellstorm arrives. Only one time was it so bad that I unstaked the tent and dragged it and everything in it down the mountain to a lower site. Not fun at night in the rain and flash.

      The best technique I have found is to just tighten up my bunghole and wait to die.

      BTW---here's another technique: (Esp good in the Southeast mountains with trees): Look at campsite trees for lightning score marks---a long vertical strip of bark and wood removed from a tree. This will indicate the place is prone to lightning strikes.
      Best advise I've ever heard and not one mentioned before. Contrary to popular belief, lighting does strike the same place more than once, in fact a lot more as some areas are prone be it the topography, underground water source, or lone pinnacles mineral or organic.

    • I was really careful and looked for dead trees before pitching my tent this week. In the winter, I can't tell which trees are dead. :/

      There was a bunch of burned wood as I was climbing out of Lost Creek. At first I thought is was a lightning strike but there was too much of it. Maybe a fire?

      Lost in the right direction.