Here we are, the year is 2022, and it occurs to me that I’ve been going into the mountains for 60 years. Where did the time go? I got to thinking about storms I’ve experienced in the mountains during those years, and there have been some real doozies. I thought I’d regale you with some of the better ones. They seemed to fall into several different categories: rainstorms; hailstorms; snowstorms; ice storms; wind storms; thunderstorms; dust storms. And there’s one more, a special type of storm I’ll save for later.

What makes a storm stand out in your mind, even once years or even decades have passed? Is it the duration, or the ferocity? Is it the location where it occurred, or who you were with at the time? Perhaps a combination of all those things.

I think of a windstorm as one where the winds are extreme, but without any accompanying precipitation. One that stands out in my mind was when Dave Jurasevich and I were climbing an Arizona peak called Ben Nevis. It was back in April of 2001 – the day was bright and sunny, but the wind was outrageous. One of those winds that blew so hard, you could lean over at an otherwise-impossible angle into it and not fall over. Kind of like you see on TV where a hurricane is blowing and someone is leaning into the wind so they don’t get blown away.

Here in the desert, we’re no strangers to dust storms. A strong wind can pick up dust from the desert floor and carry it high into the air. Visibility can be reduced to near-zero, the sun can be blotted out and it can be almost dark as night. I’ve been on mountaintops and have watched a dust storm approaching. Memorable times were in the Sierra Pinta and in the Aguila Mountains. If you’re out in the open, all you can do is keep your eyes closed and try to breathe through a piece of cloth to filter out the dust. Staying inside a vehicle works well too. One time I encountered 3 separate dust storms in a hundred-mile drive home. It’s dangerous to drive in one. You need to pull off the road and make sure your lights are off, and keep your foot off the brake. Have a look at the photo below. What you see is called a haboob, a dust storm that can be 5,000 feet high and can move at 50 miles per hour. Phoenix gets these a few times a year. Better them than us!

Ice storms are ones where rain freezes on contact with surfaces it touches. I once spent a night camping in my truck at around 5,300 feet. I was near the top of the Grand Wash Cliffs in northwestern Arizona, and a rainstorm forced me to stay inside the truck. Thankfully I had some snacks and a bottle to pee in. During the night, the rain finally stopped. Once daylight arrived, I tried to open the rear hatch of the camper shell but found I couldn’t. It took a concerted effort to force it open, and once outside I saw what had happened. Everything was coated with ice – tree branches, fence posts, especially my truck. As the rain fell during the night, it froze on the cold metal of the truck body. I walked up to the driver’s-side door and found it encased in armor that was ice. It took a lot of forceful effort to break the ice, and bit by bit I was able to free all around the edge of the door, enough that I could finally open it. There was a peak to be climbed, and I had everything I needed for my day pack, so I left the truck sitting there and headed out. Many hours later, I returned to find that the ice had all melted with the warming temperature and everything was back to normal.

The most memorable hailstorm I ever enjoyed was high in the Henry Mountains of Utah. It was early in the afternoon – I was making my way to a mountaintop when some ominous-looking clouds moved in, and quickly. I found myself near the 11,000-foot summit when the heavens opened and it started to rain. I quickly sought cover in a nearby clump of trees, putting on one of those cheap single-use rain ponchos. It was a fairly steep slope, and I hunkered down underneath an evergreen tree. The rain quickly changed to hail as the temperature dropped. The storm was outrageous, with thunder booming closely all around me. The hail wasn’t large, only pea-sized, but it fell hard. I can still see it distinctly, hitting the ground and bouncing up into the air, then rolling down the slope. It would sting as it hit me, and soon had formed a bit of a drift on the uphill side of my butt. The poncho was worthless, and I was soaked to the arse. I don’t think there was a square inch of me that wasn’t wet through. The thunder only served to heighten the drama of the hour I spent under that tree. That was the only time I ever actually feared for my life because of a storm, feeling so vulnerable. I knew that if I didn’t make a move, I’d be in big trouble, so I forced myself to get up and climb the short distance to the ridge above, then start back downhill. As I lost elevation, the storm stopped and I got a good look at the surrounding mountains. The hail covered everything down to an elevation a full 2,000 below me, turning the slopes white.

Rainstorms – we’ve all seen plenty of these. Several stand out in my mind, so memorable that they’re impossible to forget. Like the time I was camped at Papago Well along the Devil’s Road in southwest Arizona. It was October 9th of 2014. I had turned in for the night, settled in to the camper shell on the back of my truck. Before long, I was rudely awakened from a sound sleep by the sound of rain falling on the roof over my head. How it rained! So hard that I couldn’t venture outside even to take a leak. It was the remnants of Hurricane Simon, and the deluge was biblical. It wasn’t until several hours after daylight that I dared to go out and look around. The nearby road had standing water 2 feet deep in places. Fortunately my Toyota pickup had a lot of clearance and I could drive out safely, even through the worst of it. The Camino was so badly flooded that the Cabeza Prieta Refuge folks closed it for several days.

At the height of the monsoon, in July of 2010, Paul McMichael and I decided to go and climb Miller Peak. At 9,466 feet, it’s no slouch. There’s an excellent trail all the way to the top. You start at 6,700 feet. We couldn’t see the summit, as it was wrapped in clouds, but that didn’t deter us. Away we went, and things were going well for quite a while. Then the clouds lowered and we found ourselves in a fine mist. Not too bad, so we decided to continue. However, the higher we went, the more substantial the rain became. Well, we had gone most of the way and we were now pretty much drenched. I remember that last mile or more – the rain was steady, and we were like a couple of drowned rats. By the time we tagged the summit, there was zero visibility – we turned around and started right back down. There was no joy on that climb whatsoever – we endured the rain all the way back down to our vehicle.

Paul and I did another climb together which ended badly. Earlier the same year, we gambled on the weather holding off long enough to climb a peak in the Coyote Mountains. It was 2,500 vertical feet to the summit over rough terrain. The forecast said a storm was coming, but we figured we could gitterdone before it hit. We made it to the top okay, but from there we could see some angry-looking dark clouds moving in quickly. There was an easier way down, a bit farther to go but less steep, and if the weather turned on us it should be safer. Well, down we went, but I doubt we’d dropped 500 feet when the first raindrops hit. As we lost elevation, so did our ceiling, and the rain worsened. It was a cold winter storm, but at least it didn’t snow. We were soaked through and through by the time we reached the valley below. Water was squishing in our boots, and we were shivering badly as we finally reached the truck. Just in time, as hypothermia was setting in.

Back in July of 1986, Brian Rundle and I endured a rainstorm one night in the Wind Rivers. My crappy tent leaked like a sieve, and we spent hours mopping up inside, trying to keep our sleeping bags dry. The whole incident was more funny than anything else, made memorable by the humorous spin we put on the whole incident.

In February of 2009, I drove west one afternoon through Cipriano Pass into a storm that looked black as night. It was frightful to look at, and challenging to drive through. The rough desert roads all had standing water, and at one spot I had to turn around because of a raging torrent churning its way down a wash across my path. I learned later on that the area had received an entire year’s rainfall in that one storm.

Snowstorms – every climber’s favorite. In 1968, I made 2 attempts on Wedge Mountain. The first was in February. We got our asses kicked by a snowstorm low down on the mountain. Not satisfied with that amount of punishment, we went back in October, thinking that it was early enough that we’d avoid the winter storms. Hah! We got higher up the mountain that time, only to get buried under an outrageous amount of snowfall long before we even reached tree-line.

And then there was Robson in 1989. Three of us were pinned down for a week at 10,000 feet. Oh sure, the snow let up enough that we made 2 aborted attempts on the Kain Face, but otherwise the goddam snow just kept on coming. Here’s a photo taken on Day 5. Keep in mind that this was the middle of summer.

Will it ever let up?

Aconcagua, mid-February, 1990. I spent 5 nights at Berlin Camp at 19,500 feet. It snowed every day and night – at one point it was one meter deep. At least I had company. Climbers were making it up that high, but any who tried going higher were met with extreme cold, wind and more snow. It was still another thousand meters to the summit, and in those conditions everyone who ventured higher got their asses kicked. The snowstorms totally sank any delusions I had about making the summit. Too bad, because after that much time up that high, I had acclimated perfectly.

Here in the desert, we get plenty of thunderstorms, especially during our monsoon season. I thought I’d seen everything one of them could throw at me. That is, until I lived through one at the end of a day’s climbing one summer in Utah. I was parked at around 10,200 feet in a wooded saddle, getting ready to cook a meal and then settle in for the night. However, clouds moved in quickly and it started to rain, hard. No problem, I was nice and dry inside the cab of my truck. The wind picked up and started shaking the truck, then the lightning started. You’ve been in storms where there was a flash of lightning and the thunder followed immediately, right? You know it hit very close when that happens. Wow, that was a close one! But the hits just kept on coming. It was even more dramatic because it was otherwise pitch-black. The flashes were blindingly-bright, making me imagine weird things in the nearby trees with each one. I always thought that lightning would run its course, that somehow all those charged ions or whatever it is that causes it in the first place would get used up. Well, not that night. I swear that storm must have stalled right over me, because the flashes and the roaring thunder went on and on. I sat there in that truck, completely mesmerized and awestruck by the power of nature. There was no way I was cooking a meal that evening. A couple of granola bars and sips from my water bottle was all I could scrounge in the cab. It took a few hours before the storm quieted down enough that I could make a dash for the back of the truck and get inside the shell for the night. Even so, it rained all night and well into the next morning before I could emerge and go climb my next peak.

Finally, there’s one more type of storm I thought of – a shitstorm. There were times when I found myself in one. Years ago, I took a liberty I shouldn’t have and drove my truck into an area that was off-limits to civilian vehicles. As I was descending a mountain, I saw several Border Patrol vehicles driving hard and fast not far from where I’d parked. When I got back to my truck, one of the agents drove over to me. When I told him I was out there climbing mountains, he was furious. He angrily gave me a dressing-down, saying I wasn’t allowed to drive within 10 miles of that spot. Further, he said they were in the middle of a serious incident, trying to catch a smuggler on an ATV who had been seen heading to our position. It was a dangerous situation, and I was complicating things just by being there. He was astonished that I had the brass to pull such a stunt, to drive into a restricted area. He was so mad I thought he’d have a heart attack, spitting and spluttering. Needless to say, I left. On my way out, I found Border Patrol vehicles parked in the road – highly unusual – someone was in a big hurry. The drivers were out there somewhere on foot chasing Bad Guys

The empty truck.

So there you have it, Folks, a collection of some of my best storms endured. Thanks for suffering along with me.