Timp will surely be the death of me...

I knew it was a bad idea when I saw the lightning storms rolling in. We had been hiking for two hours now and were about a fourth of the way to the top of Mount Timpanogos. The rest of our group had gone ahead at a faster pace, leaving us to fend for ourselves. We still had plenty of time to make it to the top before sunrise but with the storm coming towards us, the top didn’t sound too pleasant. “We will be fine! It won’t even make it to us,” said Lexi right when a raindrop hit my head. “Right,” I replied with sarcasm in my tone of voice.

That’s when Kenton felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Our cell phones hadn’t had service for the past few miles and we knew we wouldn’t get it back until we reached the top, so him receiving a text came by chance. It was from Christian, who originally was planning on joining us on the hike but had to stay at home sick. It read, “You guys need to get out of there as soon as possible! I just checked the weather and there is going to be a lightning storm hitting in about an hour.”

All of our faces went white with terror. We knew that we needed to be out of the meadows before the lightning started or we would surely be struck. What about the rest of our group who went ahead? The only thing we could do was try to catch up to them and deliver the news. We ran but could only go so far. It was hopeless. They were too far ahead of us now. There we stood pondering on what to do. “Maybe we should just keep going and it will clear up,” stated Matt. The clouds above looked like hornets nests ready to burst with chaos. “No, we need to go.” I said. Matt wanted to make another attempt at trying to catch up with them and insisted on making one last sprint up the mountain by himself. Not a minute later we heard him scream for help. We all ran to help him and saw him backing away from two large yellow eyes staring him down, planning it’s midnight snack. Matt had encountered a cougar. Once we arrived the large cat turn around and walked away. It was an omen, telling us to turn around and go back. That is just what did and two hours later we had made it safely back to the car, leaving the others trapped on the mountain with lightning, a cougar, and no way to contact anyone.

Evan.