[philmont] Baldy Porch Talk - Lightning Safety.

 
Summer of 2000 at Philmont Training Center my son and I were able to do a
Webelos overnighter in Rayado Canyon, a little upstream of the Kit Carson
Museum. As we hiked in a storm was brewing over the mountains. We quickly set up
the small orange pup tents, with aluminum poles. The Webelos counselors had
us spread the tents around, and away from the cottonwood trees along Rayado.
 We were in a relatively flat area adjacent to a meadow. They advised we
get into the tents and lay flat; they were too low to squat inside. As my son
and I are enjoying the symphony of a Philmont thunderstorm he reaches up to
touch the tent. I instructed him not to touch the tent fabric as water would
begin to leak through. No sooner had he put his arm down and my sentence
completed then, flash-bang, simultaneously. He and I were thoroughly impressed
by the power of the thunderclap. He commented that when his arm was raised
he could feel a tingle in his finger tips and wondered if it was the electrons
going up to the clouds preceding the lightning bolt (well informed for a
Webelos 2). Closest call of our lives. When we emerged from the tent after the
storm passed there was another father/son team coming out of a tent. We
were the only remaining folks in the campsite. Everyone else had vanished! We
checked all the tents and there were no casualties, nor could we see where
the strike hit. A little while later from way downstream we heard them yelling
 for us to come to the Kit Carson Museum. When the lightning struck they
all panicked and left their tents to run to the museum, including the counselors
 (one of the two is an Eagle, the other a female Venture). The two of us
remaining dads are Eagles. I still question why the others would risk
themselves and their sons by getting up and creating a taller profile for lightning.
My son and I still marvel at our closeness to the lightning that day.
 
Any thoughts on whether laying flat, and dry, in a pup tent is safer than
crouching in the rain???
I know not to lay flat when in the storm while backpacking, but we didn't
have packs, only duffel bags.
 
Our class had flag ceremony duty one evening and we opted to lower the flags
early due to an approaching storm. Something about lowering flags on tall
metal poles made us all nervous, so we wanted to be well away from them before
the storm got anywhere nearby. This was one of those rare east to west
storms. We could see it coming for miles across the plains.
 
We returned last year and trekked to the Valle Vidal as 6-17-K3; this time
our tent had fiberglass poles. This was when the Valle was being shut down
behind us due to extreme fire danger EVERYWHERE! While at Whiteman Vega we had
a dry storm pass by. One strike a mile and a half away started a fire, but
it was quickly attacked and contained by the US Forest Service. Lightning at
Philmont is to be taken very seriously, as it should everywhere.
 
In a message dated 7/31/2007 10:47:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
philmontjohn@yahoo.com writes:

I think it's safe to say that most of the people on this list saw the same
thing I did in the sketchy information coming out of Sundays lightning strike.
 Not that we are condemming others, but we all felt the same thing.
Something was amiss.
 
I feel sort of like we are all preaching to che choir on this subject as
most have expressed virtually the same sentiment. this list has a combined
experience of probably several hundreds of years in the out of doors.
 
In Scouting as well as in the general out of doors, there are those who know
and those who don't. There are very few inbetween. It is our
responsibility to do our best to inform those who do not know, so I encourage you to try
and keep on trying.
 
All of us have experienced those advisors that we'd just as soon not be
along due to their thin layer of knowledge and good decision making and more
disasterously their inability to take positive suggestions.
 
BSA did a real good job on addressing the problem of pedophiles working with
youth adn it would be a quantum leaf forward if they found a way to deal
with these type leaders. Unfortunately there hasn't been a way yet to deal
effectively with the problem. It's sort of a lead the horse to water but can't
make him drink type thing.
 
On my last trek to Philmont in 2002 I had an advisor tell me that he thought
I was being overly cautious. So be it. Three days later he was in CHQ
medical having seven stitches put in his head from a conservation project
accident in shich he got on the downhill side of about a 2,000 pound rock that
rolled into him. I rest my case on that one.
 
I live in the humid Gulf coast and we have a lot of thunderstorms, but the
humidity is high. When I got to West Texas or to the mountains the lightning
really gets my attention. I don't know if it's the dry air or what , but the
intensity of the lightning is a lot more than I'm used to.
 
In 1996 we drove through Cimarron canyon just before the tornado hit
Cimarron. We intended to visit Philont, but opted out because of the bad weather.
On the way to Capulin we had to stop and turn around and drive away from a
lightning storm that was striking the road about five miles ahead of us. you
could the sparks of dirt and rocks flying up from the strikes. As we sat in
Capulin waiting for the storms to subside, we counted five seperate ones at
the same time right after dark in every direction. We were in the middle of
them and so was Philmont.
 
Dr. Bob put it in the proper perspective about accidents. Lightning can get
the entire crew. That is something to keep in mind.
 
John LeBlanc
 
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Received on Wed Aug 1 05:52:28 2007