Back to the recap. We arrived yesterday evening and set up our tents before nightfall and some light drizzles. We had bought extra tent stakes, thanks to our camping experience in Badlands the night prior, so we were ready for anything. Or so we thought.
Round midnight the storms hit. Storms that my two fellow intrepid explorers would agree put the big Badlands storm to shame. The thunder and lightning were frighteningly close and then the intense wind picked up. It's tough to put an estimate on the speed of the winds but if you can imagine being worried that your tent would fly away with you while in it then you'd be accurately picturing our plight.
And then there was hail. It was about the size of your loose change except it was coming down with the frequency of rain. In fact, we all thought it was rain at first.
To make things more dramatic, the weather was so severe that if you were touching the wall of the tent you'd get stung badly by the hail (as Orion can attest). The hail came down so hard that it put a hole in our tarp! We were worried that the hail might pierce through at a more frequent rate, so we covered up our exposed heads with our fleeces until we found a window of calm to make a break for the van.
Of course, no camping trip of ours is complete without tent drama. Orion and I were game planning what to do next when all of a sudden the tarp came loose. That's with 6 stakes and two separate ties, so that puts the severity in perspective.
At this point action was imperative since our shelter was being rapidly compromised. We yelled over to Elizabeth (who was in her tent 5 feet over but sounded a mile away because of the howling winds) that we were going to make a break for the van about 50 feet away. Right
then the tarp came off so much that water started pouring steadily in and we all sprinted over to the van with sleeping bags protecting us from the hail.
We made it safely to the van and attempted to sleep through the storm. Fortunately the storm gradually let up but the bad news was that all our sleeping bags were soaked, which meant there was one additional dry blanket left. We made do with Orion and I using our towels as
blankets (it dropped to 40 degrees last night, so it was chilly).
So here we are, alive and well. We checked the van and miraculously it sustained no visible damage. The camp gear, while loose, managed to hang by a thread and stay in place through the night. The weather turned nice this morning, as if mother nature decided last night
didn't even happen.
Oh and glance again at the picture. All the white you see is the leftover hail that didn't melt between last night and this morning.
Rafael
