A pretty wild storm surprised us and escalated quickly while backpacking along the John Muir Trail in the Yosemite High Country (only 10% chance of rain lol). We barely made it to our campsite in time before it started dumping down hail for hours along with some intense lightning and thunder echoing through Lyell Canyon where we were.
The hail was the largest I've experienced (up to 3/4" in the diameter), but we stayed dry and comfortable in our nice and sturdy MSR tent. The hail ended up staying frozen on the ground until the next morning making it look like it snowed in the middle of summer.
Craziest thing about the whole experience though was the second to last lightning strike of the storm actually hitting ground within a 100 ft. of our tent. Didn't get that on video unfortunately, as it happened as the storm seemed to be fading out, but it sounded like a bomb went off right next to us and blew apart a tree or something like that. Probably the scariest experience of our lives.
Storm ended up clearing out just before dark though and the quality sunset it left behind put us back into high spirits.
21 окт 2024
