"Gary" wrote in message
news:8krqf.49519$2k.18970@pd7tw1no...
Maxprop wrote:


I had a similar experience on top of Pike's Peak. But after the bolt of
lightening there was one guy dead. There is a place up on Pike's called
the Devils Playground where you can watch the electrical activity jump
from rock to rock.

Are you a Fourteener bagger? My wife and I have climbed about 15 of
them. Most had significant electrical activity and we always try to be on
our way down well before noon.


We did 32 Fourteeners before moving out of Colorado, including Elbert,
Massive, and Harvard. Our intent was to do them all, but we ran out of
time. Oddly enough we only experienced electrical activity on Evans and
Uncompahgre. On Umcompahgre we saw a teen get struck and killed. He was
fascinated by his long hair standing straight out from his head. We
yelled at him to get the *%&$*& off the peak, but he just ignored us. We
did Gray's and Torrey's in the snow, same day as most folks do. I was a
pro ski patrolman at Breckenridge at the time, and part of our training
was mountaineering, which included climbing and skiing crud in untouched
snowfields. We climbed three Fourteeners to their peaks during our
training.

When were you there? Or do you still live in CO?

Max
I was posted to Colorado Springs (Peterson AFB and Cheyenne Mnt) from 1999
to 2002. We took up Fourteeners for summer fun and skied in the winter.
We had Buddy Passes for Breck, Arapahoe and Keystone each year we were
there. We climbed many of the same mountains, Elbert, Evans (three
together near Evans I think), Gray's and Torrey's, Princeton, Pike's (many
times), Lindsay and others I can't remember.

I live in Victoria Canada now.

BC is a beautiful place, but I sure miss the Colorado Rockies. We go back
every other year to either ski or do some summer climbing. The mountain
real estate is exploding so rapidly as to boggle the mind. It's very
disturbing to those of us who spent the relatively undeveloped mid-70s
there.

Another quick Mt. Evans story: In a four hour segment on Evans we
experienced temperatures ranging from a high of 78 to a low of 28. We were
climbing in shorts, without shirts, and less than two hours later had
experienced torrential rain, winds in excess of 50kts. and eventually snow.
Ya gotta love the mountains.

Max