LIGHTNING!

When I started climbing again I noticed that bad weather was on the way, just like it had been every day between 11 and 4. The only difference is that every other day it only got windy and a little rainy. This time mother nature was not going to be so kind. Within a few minutes I was completely engulfed in a watercourse high up on El Cap. It actually felt like I was in a waterfall. I was just standing there with no where to go when all of a sudden I saw a bright light and got instantaneously shocked to hell. At first I couldn't believe it. I got shocked by lightning. It wasn't a direct hit. The lightning hit the top of El Cap and traveled down the water to me. I stood there in the waterfall tingling all over for around ten minutes waiting for it to finally calm down. When it did I called down to Charlie and asked if he was OK. He said that he was, but that he had been shocked by lightning. I quickly fixed the line now that I could move and rappeled down to Charlie where he told me that the blast threw him on his back and he blacked out. We just stood there tingling for around an hour in disbelief as to what had just happened. At this point we had to make a decision. Do we stay here and climb another day without food or do we go for the top and hope that the weather doesn't come back. Within an hour most of the big clouds over El Cap had dissipated and we decided to go for it and make it to the top. We quickly ascended the fixed line and started up the rest of the climb. Charlie led the first pitch after the storm and took a 30 foot fall, as if being struck by lighting wasn't enough. Once he finished up the pitch. We climbed one more aid pitch and then two 5.7 pitches and finally topped at 12PM after 6 full days on the wall.

"I started cleaning in a frenzy, terrified by the thunder and rain, until a bolt of lightning striking fifty feet away from me knocked me off my jumars with the ground current and deafened me with a heartstopping crack boom!"

Mar 7, 2013 - 09:11pm PT
yosemiteblog.com/2005/08/20/shattered-air-remembered-a-...
Shattered Air
Here is a good book/read about a group of hikers that got struck on top of Half Dome in 85 written by Redding local Bob Madgic. Published in 2007.
Some of you guys might know some of the yosar/rangers involved in the rescue/recovery.
Think I still have a copy layin around the house somewhere.

Closest I ever came was a bolt struck the ground about 20 ft. away from me
while I was heading south on I-5 near Red Bluff in my truck. Glad I was in the truck!

Tad

Dark Lightning - More than a decade ago, researchers unexpectedly discovered thunderstorms could generate brief but powerful bursts of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. These so-called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes are so bright that they are able to blind sensors on satellites many hundreds of miles away.