OK, I have a couple of confessions to make. It is true that if I'm already out there and it starts to pour, I don my rain gear (or, if it's warm, just get wet) and carry on. However, I do find that it takes a great deal of willpower--more than I generally have--to begin a trip in pouring rain. I have been known to wait a day or two until it clears. Second, I do stop and seek shelter well below high points if a thunderstorm hits.

I'm well aware of the dangers of lightning at high altitudes. For those who are familiar with the CDT in the Long Lake/Fishhook Lake areas just east of Steamboat Springs, CO, where the Divide is a broad forested ridge of about 10,000' elevation, here's a cautionary tale from my horsepacking days in the 1950's. One morning we didn't get the pack balanced correctly on one of our horses. Just north of Fishhook Lake, the horse's pack went right over and under her belly. Since the horse was very gentle, she just stopped and, with a reproachful look, waited patiently for us to fix it. While we were fixing the pack, there was a really close lightning strike. When we got about a mile down the trail, we came upon a giant Engelmann spruce tree, right alongside the trail, in enormous splinters, with some six-foot long sections rammed several feetinto the ground as much as 50 feet from the tree. It was obvious that the lightning strike (perhaps ground to air) just exploded the tree. If the horse's pack hadn't been unbalanced and turned over, we would have been right there just when the lightning hit.
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view--E. Abbey