Ask Lemmy

Funny enough I came here to tell a similar story: We were surprised by upcoming bad weather with the possibility of a thunderstorm in the alps somewhat - we saw it coming, but underestimated the speed. (That was before Smartphones btw, so no weather app).

There is a Y junction on that trail. One leads to a serviced hut (which we hate, the people operating it were assholes) and towards the "wrong" valley. It's shorter but yeah...the wrong direction.

The other way leads through a small section of a fixed rope/via ferrata section but straight towards our cars. We thought we would have enough time.

Around 5min after entering the route (which goes further up far beyond where we enter) we find out it takes longer than anticipated and it's a proper alpine thunderstorm. Which is coming fast now. Well, if you haven't seen a proper thunderstorm in the mountains - they are something else. Due to the higher pressure gradients, the interference with the terrain,etc. they are absolutely terrifiying. And deadly. If the lighting doesn't get you the cold will (I literally saw temperature drops of 27 degrees in 20 minutes). And it that doesn't get you the stones will.

Well. Slight panic set in,but we can handle. Not our first rodeo. Until our hair started to "levitate" a bit under the helmets, on the arms,etc. And then the steel wires started to "sing". Kind of like a Theremin.

This when we knew we were fucked. Going back up? Means exposing us more. Down the wires? Likely going to electrocute us.

So we decided to get down directly. Stupidest decision I ever was part of in the mountains. because we didn't really know the terrain below us,but it's around 180m to the ground and then around 500m of mountain pasturr before the forest starts. Our logic was that the risk from the steel wire is higher than the risk of being forced to weather out in the rock wall. What would have happened if we didn't find a good intermediate stand at one point I don't know. (None has a 180m rope with one...so you need to find a lot of intermediate stands to secure yourself. This is normally done upwards,not downards. At least we had two ropes which makes things much easier. )

We send the girl that was with us down first (as she was the lightest and the best climber). And actually made it down surprisingly quick. But fuck...that could have gone wrong. When we were basically at the bottom a lighting hit a section just above were we would have been. Pelting a section a bit to the left of us with football sized stones.

There is a scene in rick and Morty where thex are crying in their car how close the last adventure was - it was basically us in the car, we all were shaking for a day.

Cool, I never realised there could be possible warnings of lightning strikes.