Hikers face California’s peaks, then the storms that rule them

Megan Eskew did everything right before she climbed Mt. Whitney last month. She got in top physical shape, carefully checked the weather and, noticing a chance of thunderstorms, heeded expert advice to start very early — afewminutes after midnight.

- By Jack Dolan

KENT PORTER Press Democrat LIGHTNING strikes Mt. St. Helena in Napa County in 2021. Bolts on a high mountain can surround a hiker.

Moving quickly up the 11-mile trail, she climbed out of the trees and onto bare granite — which conducts electricity — long before sunrise. She reached the 14,500-foot summit at 7:45 a.m. and, after snapping a few photos, hightailed it down. She knew she had to get back to the safety of the trees before the thunder and lightning struck.

‘Then she felt a sprinkle.

“Before you could even process the thought, ‘Oh, that’s rain,’ thunder boomed,” Eskew said. She picked up the pace, and then the thunder — which sounds like artillery at that altitude, where you're essentially inside the storm —boomed again.

Everyone around her started running downhill, so Eskew ran too.

“The storm just didn’t let up,” she said.

It got so cold that the wind-driven rain turned to hail and started pelting her from behind, stinging her neck and ears. But what worried her most, as she raced for the trees still thousands of feet below, was lightning.

At that altitude, the bolts don’t just come down in single strikes; they can surround a hiker. Hair can suddenly stand on end, metal hiking poles can start to buzz, and a direct hit can be fatal.

“I have three little kids, and I just kept picturing their little faces,” Eskew said days later, still shaken by the experience. She remembers telling herself over and over, “Keep running, you cannot be the idiot who dies up here today.”

As a late-summer monsoon spread across California in recent weeks, it delivered hundreds of thousands of lightning strikes — record numbers in August and the first week of September. Those sparked hundreds of wildfires and, for many hikers, sheer terror.