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3 bolts jolt climbers
Caught in a storm high on the Grand Teton, a team endures trial by fire and ice.

By Whitney Royster

Lightning bolts near the summit of the Grand Teton struck three climbers three times Aug. 21, singing jackets and skin as the men hunkered down and prayed for their lives.

Dave Schwietert, 25, Fletcher Brinkerhoff, 28, and Mike Gauthier, 33, were within 200 feet of the 13,770-foot summit, tied to one another with a rope, when a storm rolled in. Schwietert said he saw the first charge strike.

"I see this blue-green ball coming down the rope at me," Schwietert said. "It was like the size of a beach ball. Then boom! It hit."

The first bolt shot from a rock to Brinkerhoff, who was leading, to Gauthier and then to him, Shcwietert said.

"I said, 'Holy sh--! I think I was just struck by lightning!' Schwietert remembered.

The trio was in a small, V-shaped crevice in the rock on the Upper Exum route of the Grand. Brinkerhoff was climbing out of the corner.

"There was no warning," said Brinkerhoff, a U.S. Geologic Survey employee who lives in Arizona. "I heard a little bit of rumbling, then all of a sudden it was boom! And it shook me pretty good."

The team of experienced climbers set out from the Garnet Canyon Meadows at about 5 a.m. Forecasters predicted a 10 percent chance of rain.

Schwietert said the weather was good on the approach, and the team saw some clouds in Idaho while climbing.

"At worst we thought we'd get some rain or graupel," he said. But part way up the Upper Exum, clouds enveloped the trio.

"It started as light snow and turned to graupel," he said. "We were hoping it would just pass. We thought that precipitation was the 10 percent."

The rocks on the Grand, now slick, made climbing tougher. Schwietert said the team started climbing simultaneously, rather than one by one, because of the weather and the easy terrain.

Schwietert said Brinkerhoff and Gauthier, the head climbing ranger at Washington's Mount Rainier National Park, had completed the technical part of the climb and were in a nook about 200 feet from the summit.

Because the rocks were slick, Schwietert said he called to Gauthier for help getting up the last pitch. As Gauthier hauled him up, Schwietert saw the bolt come down the rope.

"It went from Fletcher to Mike to me down the rope," Schwietert said.

The charge ran through the whole body, Brinkerhoff and Schwietert said.

"When you get shocked from an outlet, usually it shocks you to your shoulder and it really hurts," Brinkerhoff said. "This was more intense and went through the whole body."

Gauthier said the sensation was of being electrocuted.

"I felt as though someone was kicking me in the back of my head really hard," he said.

Schwietert hid in the nook with his partners, and Gauthier told him to take off caribiners and other metal objects.

"We were scrambling to get it all off," Schwietert said. "We're thinking we're going to hunker down and wait it out."

Amid 35-mph winds and hail and rain came another blast. "Out of nowhere we get a second hit," Schwietert said

The bolt again hit a nearby rock, then bounced to Brinkerhoff, Gauthier, then Schwietert.

"This one was bigger," Schwietert said. "It actually lifted us. That one spooked us bad. We weren't touching each other or touching the rock."

Gauthier said the novelty of adventure evaporated.

"The first one got my attention, the second and third one instilled the fear," he said.

Schwietert yelled to his buddies, "So much for what they say about getting hit by lightning twice!" Then he sat, held his head in his hands and prayed.

"We were trying to wait this thing out," he said. "I kept moving my limbs to make sure I was still okay."

Brinkerhoff said the second strike changed the situation.

"We realized it was very serious, that this was still the beginning of the storm cell," he said. "It was kind of one of those things where you think, 'There's a chance I'm going to live, and there's also a very good chance that we won't.' It was very serious there for a while."

Brinkerhoff said he thought he smelled his hair burning after the second hit.

The climbers talked about moving from their nook but decided higher was too exposed and lower was too risky. Then the third bolt hit.

"It was the same feeling," Schwietert said. "We were still curled up shaking because of the weather and the cold."

Schwietert said the ordeal lasted about 30 minutes. The team scurried to the top, then began a descent down the Owen-Spalding route.

Once they reached the Lower Saddle, Brinkerhoff discovered what looked like a small cigarette burn on his jacket. The nylon burn was likely the smell after the second strike, Schwietert said. The bolt went through five layers of clothing.

Brinkerhoff then found a burn on the top of his left shoulder.

Schwietert said when he took his gloves off at the saddle, his hands were purple and his veins were prominent.

"I think it was from the first strike when my hands were on the rope," he said.

In all, Brinkerhoff had four burns on his body: one on his shoulder, one on each ankle and one on his left shin. Gauthier had one burn on his back by his ribs that is more of a streak, Schwietert said.

"Since Fletcher was the highest, I think he took the brunt," he said.

Schwietert said the incident won't stop him from climbing but gave him a sense of his luck.

"That was my eight lives," he said.

Gauthier credits his team for coolness under pressure.

"The mountains don't care about you," he said. "I credit my teammates for holding it together pretty well."

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