Got caught in a freak storm on the West Coast Trail last August

I was about 8 miles north of the Nitinat Narrows crossing when the sky just opened up sideways. Hail started pelting us so hard I had to ditch my poles and crawl under a fallen cedar with my partner for 45 minutes until it passed. Anyone else had a weather event totally blindside them on a trail you thought you knew?

2 comments

2 Comments

richardk265d ago

The hail part is what gets me. I had almost the same thing happen on the Juan de Fuca trail a few years back, except we found a tiny overhang under a rock face and just pressed our backs against it while marble-sized ice bounced off our packs. What worked for us was ditching the big bags and keeping only the essentials in our chest pouches so we could move faster when it let up. We also made a point to check the marine forecast and the inland forecast next time, because on coastal trails you're basically getting weather from two different directions at once. The whole experience taught me to always have a bailout plan in my head, even on a trail I've hiked ten times before.

the_wade5d ago

Start with the absolute worst being up in the alpine when a dry lightning storm kicked off right over head. Had to ditch everything metal and lie flat in a boulder field while the thunder shook the ground. It made me realize how much we treat the outdoors like a predictable machine when really nature just does whatever it wants. Same thing happens in everyday life too. People plan their whole weeks down to the hour but then a kid gets sick or a car breaks down and everything falls apart. We pretend we have control but really we are just guessing most of the time.