5.5 miles of hiking • 2750' elevation gain •
New Summits - 12 & 13 of 20 for the Year 2013
Coming off my big Trifecta weekend, I thought a quick two-fer would be easy enough. With a small weather window early in the morning, I knew that it was going to be tight and I would have to move fast. I hit Thorp Mountain first and when I got to the summit, it was still nice with some clouds building on the horizon. Little did I know... that would be the last blue sky I would see for the entire day. After descending back into the forest and traversing over to the ridge for Hard Knox. I began to hear some thunder off in the distance. I knew the forecast was calling for afternoon T-Showers, but this was too early !!! I began to move faster and so did the storm. By the time I emerged from the forest and began to scramble up the exposed north face of the summit. The weather had already turned south and big thunder heads were on the move. I could see a wall of rain of in the distance and dark black clouds with flashes of lightning not far behind. Right now I had to make a decision. Turn around a few hundred feet shy of the summit or push hard and hope to get off the summit before this storm hits. I decided to make a run for it and boy did I cut it close. Spent about 1 min on the summit and then charged back down the south face to connect with the standard route. I looked back up at the summit and it was no longer visible. The thunder was right above my head at this point and flashes of lighting soon followed. With in minutes I was right in the cloud, you could feel the electricity all around. I quickly checked to make sure that I didn't have any metal in my day pack. After gearing back up, I began to sprint along the ridge and down into the forest. I was staying just a few minutes ahead of the storm at this point, but eventually it caught up to me when I got into the meadow. The sky finally opened up and poured down on me like a morning shower. Luckily my car was not too far away at this point and I was able to get down in about 20 min. This was a fun climb, just didn't have time to truly explore the area and take it all in. I will have to plan for some more climbs in this area next year.
