Our trail climbed steadily along the west side of a massive ridge that rose to the nearly 13,000-foot summit of Mount Hope, just two miles away. From there, an 800-foot descent separated us from the last camp of our trip, a 10-day backpack trek in early July of the Weminuche Wilderness in Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

As we eased up the trail, flashes and booms of lightning and thunder talked to us in the distance. We pushed on, undaunted by the drizzle and it's bright, noisy companions. Flash - pause - boom!

I began counting the decreasing intervals between lightning and thunder to determine how far from us the lightning was striking. The last strike was about four seconds between boom and strike - less than a mile away. Bill stopped in his tracks, and said, "Looks like we'd better wait awhile." I nodded. "The trail hits ridge-top in a few hundred yards," I said. "We're better off here."

Crowded against alpine spruce on our windward side, we continued to gauge the lightning's proximity. I waited for the static that I had experienced several times with Saint Elmo's Fire in storms at high altitude. Hair stands on end. Sparks follow finger tips. Nylon clothing crackles and eyebrows tingle. I knew that these indicators could precede a close and dangerous lightning strike. They didn't come.

In spite of being wet and cold, I stood in stillness, watching a cow elk graze near the saddle in the ridge, below and across the basin from us. Peace reigned.
The storm passed. A light drizzle continued as thunder rumbled in the distance with no visible lightning.

The trail curved to the left around the shoulder of the ridge into a pass. Several hundred feet below, the headwaters of Hope Creek came into view. We stopped momentarily and drank in the view.

I noticed a small storm in Beaver Meadows, four miles to the west and a few thousand feet below. It appeared as a narrow, white column tilted at a 30-degree angle, approaching us. Sun filtered through the clouds onto the beautiful column. "Must be hail," I thought, the rain increasing.

Without warning, a blinding white flash and simultaneous deafening explosion enveloped me. Every muscle in my body contracted violently, dropping me into a fetal ball. In the flash, I knew that I had been struck by lightning. Having lost total control over my body, I fell, feeling as if I were floating down in slow motion. I never felt myself hit the ground.
When I opened my eyes, I noticed my rain- and mud-splattered left leg angled above me. Lying in boulders, groggy, I heard myself say, "That's my leg, I must still be alive." I could sense misty rain peppering my eyes and face.

Looking for Bill, I noticed that my pack had twisted crossways across my back but with shoulder and waist straps still in place. I was twisted into it like a pretzel. Slowly, I painstakingly unbuckled the waist strap and pulled an arm free. My legs flopped like dead meat onto the rocks as I struggled with the pack. I felt no feeling in them, nothing. I moaned. Bill said later that he thought I had died.

 "Dean, are you all right?" The tone in Bill's voice revealed that he was really asking, "Are you alive?"

"I'm OK," I answered. "You?"

"I can't get up," he said, "but I think I'm all right."

"She nailed us, didn't she?"

"She sure as hell did," he replied.

I lay on my pack among the boulders, head downhill and face up. I was gasping, my heart pounding as if I'd sprinted up the mountain.

The rain on my face was refreshing - the first sensation I felt since the violent contractions. With no recollection of tumbling in the rocks, I must have been out for a few seconds.

As my heaving chest subsided, I assessed my body. My arms, head and neck moved freely and seemed normal. From the waist down though, I felt nothing. My legs couldn't move. Hard as I tried, they wouldn't respond to anything I asked them to do. My hiking shorts and underwear were in shreds, and my socks and boots were nearly demolished.
The rain continued to pelt my face, and my mind began to clear. Realizing there would be no one to help us, the seriousness of the situation began to sink in, as did the rain. Knowing that hypothermia was our biggest danger, I forced myself into action. I squirmed over the boulders, reaching the trail just as Bill pulled himself up and sat on his pack. Puffing like a steam engine, exhausted from the effort of getting to the trail, I laid back against the cut of the trail. Bill crawled hands and knees up the trail to me. Spreading his poncho to cover us both, we huddled together as lightning hammered the ridge above us.
"Do your legs feel like they're asleep?" asked Bill.

I took stock. "My thighs do," I responded.

"Mine feel like pin cushions from the knees down," he said.

Within moments, I knew exactly what he was saying. Accompanied by an extreme sensation of heat, I felt as if an infinite number of needles were being forced into my legs from all directions. My stomach began to roll as I writhed in agony on the muddy trail. BOOM! Another close strike. Nearly bare from the hips down, I began shivering convulsively as my body heat drained. BOOM! Closer yet.

"Don't hit me again," I heard myself say out loud. "I can handle this, but please don't give me any more."

The rain drummed hard on our shelter, Bill's poncho, as lightning struck just a quarter mile above us.

Over the thunder, we hollered our ideas of what we should do next. Beaver Creek was the nearest refuge from the storm. Hope Creek the shortest route out of the mountains. Neither option would put us anywhere near our vehicle.

The storm began to ease but the leg needles and body convulsions persisted. For the first time, I noticed the heavy smell of lightning - a concoction of ozone and pulverized rock. I had never experienced it in the near nauseating concentrations that hung over us like a cloud.

"I can't feel anything yet, but I can move my ankles," Bill said. "I'm going to try to stand up." Shakily, he made it to his feet. As he picked his way over the boulders to my pack, I noticed that the needles had moved to below my knees and that my hips could move. An agonizing progression, relief was creeping back into my body.

Bill tossed my sleep pad, sleeping bag and tent up to me. While I crawled into the bag, which I had slipped into the unsupported tent, Bill put on warm clothes. The rain slowed to a drizzle.

We massaged our legs, gritting teeth against the pain. We rehashed our frightful ordeal. Gradually, mobility returned to my legs, starting at my hips and moving toward my feet. Sensation followed close behind. Bill had been paralyzed from the knees down, his pants and boots still intact. A few feet higher on the trail, I had taken the brunt of the charge. Cup-shaped holes about the diameter of small dinner plates remained where each of us had stood.

The drizzle gave way to hail. Thunder became louder and nearer. Before full sensation and mobility returned to my legs, I attempted to stand with the hope of moving out to safer ground before the next wave of the storm hit. Stand I could. Feel the ground under my feet, I could not. But I could walk, gingerly taking steps, so we decided to go for Archuleta Lake and on to Wolf Creek Pass where we knew we would find help.

We packed quickly. Walking without feeling the ground required intense concentration. Each step was calculated to avoid rocks and slick spots - no easy matter with a half inch of hail underfoot.

On the shoulder of Mount Hope, I looked back for Bill. Thirty yards behind, he came steaming and puffing up the trail. In spite of the extra effort required to plant my feet, I was charged with adrenalin, moving quickly. I even breathed easily.

After a long descent and an arduous creek crossing, two tents came into view at Archuleta Lake. Amorous sounds coming from within one tent told that tale. The larger tent, however, appeared empty. Pushed on by persistent rain and hail, we looked into the four-man tent. It was uninhabited. We claimed it for the night.

With water heating on the stove, we again took stock. Luckily, Bill found only bruises. There was no obvious point of entry on himself or his pack. But a top corner of my backpack was charred and melted. Had the charge gone through me, into the ground, then back up into Bill's legs? It was evident that my external aluminum pack frame had carried tens of thousands of volts around my upper body. Had my lungs and heart been paralyzed for as long as my legs, that would have been my end. My aluminum pack frame had saved me and perhaps both of us.

My hips sustained first-degree burns where the lower frame of my pack crossed my back. My ankles and feet had second- and third-degree burns where gaping holes were burned in my boots and socks. We theorized that because steam has 20 times the volume of water, the intense heat of the lightning strike hit my wet feet with a force that literally blew apart my heavy climbing boots and scalded my feet.

In spite of the hits we'd taken, first-aid cream and a Valium took us into a leisurely supper and a comfortable night's rest.

The next day dawned cool and clear. With eight miles between us and our vehicle, the plan was to move out early and get to Lobo Overlook before afternoon storms moved in. With my climbing boots out of commission, I was thankful for the running shoes I had along for use in camp. But my feet were so swollen I couldn't get the shoes on, even without laces. Cutting slits down the sides and along the soles expanded the shoes enough for me to slip in my feet.

Soon after packing up and moving down the trail, it became painfully obvious that my burned feet would present more challenges. As blood rushed to attend to the burns, the swelling increased. Within a half mile, my shoes were again overstuffed and additional modifications to them became necessary. Again and again, I stopped to modify the shoes to relieve the pain, until the shoes more closely resembled thongs. After a while, the shoes fit so loosely to my feet that I was back to calculating each step to keep my feet from slipping out of their rigging. We progressed slowly, as did the swelling. Even though stepping lightly, every step produced a sharp, hammering pain on the top of my arches. As a counter-measure to the swelling, I frequently stopped to prop my feet up on a tree. When the swelling subsided, we pressed on, whittling away slowly at the eight miles to the car.

Finally, the microwave tower and the car appeared. The car loaded, Bill turned the key, anxious to drive us to medical help and safety. The car had other ideas. It didn't start, producing neither a moan or click from the starter. Another try, the same result. Lifting the hood revealed the problem - the car's battery had been stolen, leaving us with no means of starting the car. With no choice but to get back on our feet, I ignored my swollen and throbbing feet and trudged with Bill the three miles of access road to the Wolf Creek Ski Area, where we "borrowed" a ski-area vehicle - the keys were left on the seat - and drove to South Fork.

The Del Norte doctor smiled and shook his head. "You guys and your lightning," he exclaimed. While dressing my burned feet, he described a local farmer who was smart enough to get out of the field when a storm passed through but managed to get zapped while sitting on his couch in his living room. Lightning had traveled through his antenna, wiring and TV set. Another case saw a man who had previously been struck twice by lightning get hit yet a third time when he stopped his car to watch a storm several miles away over the Sangre de Cristo Range. Lightning never strikes the same place twice?
All we can do in the presence of lightning is to use good judgment and common sense, knowing that even if we stay home the powers of nature are so extreme and unpredictable that our best efforts are not a guarantee of safety. Maybe coming away unscathed six of seven times wasn't bad at all. That holds, as well, for the three St. Elmo's events I've experienced since getting struck by lightning. I am more careful around lightning, but nothing will hold me back from enjoying my beloved San Juans.