Storm at Teapot Rock (1984)
Updated January 16, 2011
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Four of us were beginning a week-long summer trip to the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park in Utah, the vast, remote region west of the Colorado River. Two days earlier, we had all flown into Montrose, Colorado from various points around the country, rented off-road-capable jeeps in Ouray, and drove nonstop over the San Juan Mountains to Utah. It was a hectic trip, with just an overnight stay at a developed campsite near the Hite Crossing on Lake Powell.
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On the morning of our first day in the backcountry, we left Utah 95 onto a primitive road going north toward Canyonlands, just after the highway crosses the Colorado River at the Hite Crossing.
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The ground here is mostly hard, white and yellow sandstone with a little orange dirt. The white sandstone is so lumpy that this road is considered the worst in Canyonlands, taking an hour to drive 2 miles as it threads its way across each little wash. Some parts are on ledges no wider than a jeep, and the only flat camping surfaces are in the bottoms of washes.
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I saw a slickrock peninsula on our right, between a couple of broad drainages a hundred feet deep. This looked like a good campsite, reasonably level and safe from flooding. Visibility was superb, as we were taller than the widely spaced junipers dotting the landscape. The cliffs across the road were a quarter mile away, with the knob of Teapot Rock towering 700 feet above us.
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It in the mid 90’s all afternoon—typical Utah desert weather. Sixty miles east, beyond the Land of Standing Rocks, the Doll House, and Moab, we could see the tiny La Sal Mountains, topped by a small cumulus cloud suspended motionless above the highest summit. It was the only thing besides the sun in the crystal clear blue sky.
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The La Sal range is really not so tiny—20 miles long with summits over 12,500'—but from here it looked like a distant, insignificant mound, hazy green on the bottom, topped by grayish talus slopes above tree line. It’s common for an isolated mountain range like that to provoke local cloud formation in a summer afternoon.
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Three of us began setting up camp, while my cousin, who had an injured foot and couldnÕt walk, stayed in the jeep. That little cloud stayed put over the summits, as I expected it would, but I noticed it was slowly growing in all dimensions, eventually taking on a cumulonimbus mushroom shape with a white crown above an ominous gray bottom shadowing the entire mountain range. The mountains did not quite rise to contact the cloud, so we could see a sliver of distant blue sky between them. It was obvious that a storm was brewing in those hills, and I was glad not to be up there. Indeed, soon we could see the telltale streaks of rain beneath the cloud, and before long the grayish top of the mountains turned white—a snowstorm in July!
Since we were in such a rush to get out of town and off the highway, much of our gear was still in disarray, so it took a long time to unload and organize for the evening. I was too busy to take pictures.) |
Just in case of rain, we set up our two tents and staked them down before dinner. Tent stakes donÕt typically do much in Canyonlands, as there are rarely more than a couple of inches of dirt atop the impenetrable sandstone. With the sun to our west it was still just as bright, calm and hot as it had been all day, so I was hoping this storm didnÕt have the oomph to grow all the way here. After all, how could those puny La Sal Mountains provoke a weather pattern 60 miles upwind of them? As we prepared dinner, the descending cloud swallowed the mountains. All we could see to the east was gloom and doom.
Toward early evening, while we set up our stove, table, and chairs and began cooking dinner, blue and gray were battling it out above us, and gray was winning. The leading edge of the storm was now directly overhead: half the sky was dark and foreboding and half a welcoming bright blue. The gray half was roiling, with swirls in every direction, as if preparing to consume us for its dinner. To my dismay, I could now see rain probably reaching to the ground in the east. The storm had clearly spread out of the mountains into the desert. But that rain was still well on the other side of the Colorado River, maybe 15-20 miles away, and where we were, it was yet peaceful. It would take a much bigger storm to blot out the sun now low in our west above the cliffs. While I intellectually knew it made no sense, I felt that Cataract Canyon would be a barrier to the storm, just as it is a barrier to people and roads, and the sunny sky on our side of the canyon only reinforced this feeling. How bad could a storm be while it is still sunny? If you didnÕt look up, you wouldnÕt have known anything strange was happening. In fact, IÕm not sure everyone in our group was paying much attention to the sky, as all our energy went into camp chores.
Suddenly, with no warning, kapow! Like a locomotive, an intense blast of wind roared through our camp. Our first warning of this was the sound of our pots and pans blowing off the table—it got to them a split second before we felt it. We hardly knew what hit us before the wind started to whip. Our big A-frame tent ripped out of its stakes, threatening to blow down the canyon, until my brother jumped in to save it. I hoped it was an isolated few gusts, but it did not let up, getting worse by the second, slamming into us from every direction. Clothes, camping gear, and everything not attached flew around. Nothing in our camp seemed safe from liftoff, no matter how heavy. Our table and chairs blew over, though magically I salvaged the pot of cooked spaghetti and sauce before the table collapsed. With my cousin stuck in the jeep and my brother being ballast for the tent, only two of us were left to dash around the campsite, trying to secure things before they disappeared down the canyons. As we scrambled, the sun blinked out and the sky was totally overcast—how quickly that last half of blue disappeared! While we were still scurrying around, the heavens opened up, with sheets of rain pounding us with the force of fire hoses. Then, flash! Boom! Continuous lighting and thunder began hammering us. I grabbed the pot of food, and we dashed into the tent that my brother was still holding down. There was no time to help my cousin get out of the jeep.
I never had a storm hit me with so little warning. Sure, we had seen this coming for hours, but usually you can see the rain front approaching well before you get wet. Somehow the rain came down on us from above even though I thought it was still miles away. I guess sometimes it just starts where you are. This must be what they mean by cloudburst.
With the three of us in the tent sheltered from the incredible violence outside, I counted seconds between the lighting and thunder: first 10 seconds, then 5, then 1, then zero! There was no need to count anymore: it was on top of us! From inside the tent, we could not see what was happening, but it didnÕt matter as it rapidly became black as night, except for the blinding flashes of light. In fact, lightning was so continuous we didnÕt need to use our flashlights, while the wind, rain and thunder were so deafening we had to yell to talk.
I’d been in storms before where an occasional lighting bolt strikes nearby. But here the lightning seemed to be permanently focused on our campsite, as each crack of thunder was simultaneous with the lightning. Instantaneous thunder means the bolts are within a couple hundred feet. Here we were, purposely camped on a high peninsula above a canyon to stay out of the flood zone, only to become the highest target for a lightning strike! We were hiding in a tent with metal poles. The jeeps were no protection, having only canvas tops, and anyway they were even taller targets than the tents and the trees.
I feared lighting much more than a flash flood, but it was far too wild outside to risk a dash into one of the canyons for protection—a wet person standing up outside would be a lightning rod for sure. Besides, what would be more likely to kill us, lightning or flood? Should we go low into a canyon and risk drowning or stay high and risk electrocution? Was there a happy medium? Instead, I suggested we squat in the tent with just our feet touching the ground—a technique I heard is the safest position in a storm without protection. This way, if lightning struck our tent or nearby tree and spread across the ground, our contact with the ground would be minimal. I had us remove all metal objects like watches and belts, and told everyone to pay attention to their hair. If it started to stand on end, lie down right away. In this position the three of us tried to eat dinner, but the unstaked tent was flapping so wildly the pot of spaghetti tipped over, spilling a terrible mess onto the floor.
Whereas it was hot and sunny just 30 minutes ago, it was now black outside, with unrelenting wind and rain, nonstop lightning, and crashing thunder. The incredible violence outside lasted an eternity, while we crouched in terror. Storms this extreme usually move on quickly, but this one seemed quite happy right here, thank you. Mercifully, after more than an hour, the lightning subsided, so finally I felt safe enough to give the all clear to change from our painful squatting positions. While it was still raining and no one dared go outside, we were able to wipe up the mess inside our tent, get into our sleeping bags, and call it a day. By now, the sun had fully set and it was truly night.
While lying in my bag, I realized that the sound of the rain fading away was being replaced by the distant roar of rushing water, and it was getting louder and closer. It was soon obvious that torrents of water were plunging down those cliffs beneath Teapot Rock. It was too dark to see, but it soon sounded like Niagara Falls across the road, with walls of water roaring into the canyons around us. It felt like we were camped in a tiny island in the middle of a raging river. Was this campsite really that well protected from floods? I was no longer so sure, because the water sounded like it would swamp us any minute. I would have given anything to see what was happening out there. I didnÕt have to move from this tent after all, in order to exchange my fear of electrocution with fear of drowning!
The sound of crashing water didn’t let up for hours, while we had no choice but to huddle in our sleeping bags praying for redemption. Even if our tent was on high enough ground, I fully expected in the morning to find our jeeps washed down the canyons. But thankfully, the floods never touched us, and we fell asleep to the white noise of river rapids.
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We awoke to another peaceful, cloudless Utah desert morning, and outside it looked like last night was a dream. Aside from some gear strewn about and caught in bushes, the only signs that there had been a major storm were pools of water filling all the slickrock depressions. The canyons and gullies around us were bone dry, with only a puddle here and there. How could so much water leave so little in its wake? Where were all the smoldering trees that must have been fried by lightning?
The La Sal Mountains were in the clear, their upper third a brilliant white. The only casualties of the storm were a cooking pot and a few items blown somewhere into the canyons, and a bent tent pole. Interestingly, the smaller high tech backpacking tent, which was set up with its wimpy stakes but never used, survived in place while everything around it blew away. Impressive technology, I thought.
My cousin was fine, overnight in the jeep. Unlike us, cooped up, cowering in the tent, he had a front row seat, enjoying the light and sound show. Nobody told him to worry about lightning, so he never did. But that was only in the beginning. After dark, the roar of the maelstrom in every canyon left him no doubt that he would be washed away. He had such a firm conviction of this, that he wrote himself a memorial poem.
Analysis
While we didn’t get hurt, IÕm sure we were in danger from lightning, as it repeatedly struck so close. What could we have done to avoid this risk? It seems impossible to find a place safe from both flash floods and lightning at the same time, in terrain with no vegetation taller than a man. The only in-between places were on the sloping canyon walls where it was impossible to camp. Possibly we could have found a shallow depression not likely to take on too much water. But IÕm not sure that would have been much protection, and at best we would have gotten drenched, because IÕm sure every shallow wash was flooded.
In retrospect I think we set up our tents in a good spot, but it was not the best spot to wait out the storm. To protect ourselves during the lightning we might have fled into one of the canyons, finding protection by huddling next to a wall, although it would have been a miserable wet several hours waiting, because there was no way to predict when the lighting was going to stop. There is no rule that you have to be comfortable when you are protected.
Was there a lesson learned? Mainly, I learned that storms donÕt always approach in slow motion. Even with miles of visibility, change can be unexpected. Also, I developed a much greater respect for the wind: we should have secured our campsite earlier so we werenÕt scrambling so frantically when it hit us. Our plan was to sleep in our two tents, not to cram three people into one tent and leave the other person in a jeep. Since then, whenever I set up a tent, I rarely rely solely on stakes, always tying at least one part of my tent to a shrub or tree. It has become second nature to place large rocks in all empty pots and on tables and chairs not in use. Rocks or ropes also secure all clothing, sleeping bags, pads and tarps. If we are near the edge of a precipice (often the case in Canyonlands) we take these precautions even if there is no significant wind at the time.