I electrocuted myself four times this weekend.  Not intentionally, of course - I haven't gone for that as a cheap thrill since at least, um, college (electrical shocks applied to test physiological reactions in a psych lab experiment) - the wiring in this old house is unbelievably screwy.  It's scary to know and understand how low-voltage power systems work, be able to design, specify and install them, and then still get burned by some 30-year old jury-rig job.  I've never really been a fan of electricity; yeah, of course, I like lights and refrigerators just fine, but sticking my hands in the socket, or rewiring things with power running through them, and even sticking a 9-volt on my tongue:  These aren't things that excite me.  Not at all.

Working in facilities engineering with a particularly good electrical contractor and Master Electrician above me taught me lots about how to relatively safely work on 120V household power, and to stay away from 240V and higher.  Nevertheless, when a GF's stove-top heating element wasn't working, I pulled it apart to look at it.  Obviously, the infinite drive (rheostat) that controlled the power flow to the burner was broken - it was either off, or all the way on.  We drove down to the appliance store with the offending gadget, and came back with a new retrofit piece, that I had to modify slightly with my engineer's toolkit to make fit on the older range top.  I took apart the top of the stove when we got home, pulled it away from the wall (revealing the scary 'we-don't-know-what-it-is, we're-calling-it-the-POD' behind the range), and stuck it on.  As I moved my hand behind the range to reconnect the power to the controls, I got the largest and most painful shock I've ever received; I jumped, probably hit my head somewhere.  I cursed, extremely loudly, blasphemying all sorts of things that don't bear repeating, and yelled a lot loudly.  The pain was quick and sharp, but the memory of it stayed with me for a few seconds.  I (very wrongly) yelled at my girlfriend, asking her why she didn't tell me why I didn't turn off the power at the circuit breaker; obviously, it was completely my fault, and after a few seconds it dawned on me that I should have told her what I was doing and how to react to an emergency situation (hit me hard with a broom or something non-conductive, or kill the power).  I did a dumb, dumb thing, and was lucky the amperage hadn't stuck me to the hot lead my hand passed.  After my chemical balance came back towards normal, I was happy that she was more worried about me than angry for yelling at her about my stupidity.

So, to make a long story short, I really don't like electricity all that much.  Sure, it's great to have light scome on when you flip the switch - but sometimes I wonder, playing with it and rewiring the house occasionally, could I live without it?  Nah, probably not.  It's worth thinking about, though.  That leads me into the power-filled set of stories that I'm reconsidering and rewriting now, about learning of uncontrolled electricity in the mountains.  Nothing so tame as cursing because I forgot to turn off a mere 240VAC circuit.  Oh, much, much bigger, and with big consequences if I screwed it up.  Since I'm still writing this, I guess I haven't (yet).  Hope you enjoy.

Allow me to relate yet another fine adventure on top of a beautiful day of mountaineering on Mount Massive, the second tallest of Colorado's 14ers.  This wasn't my first time on the mountain - I had come through the previous summer and hiked the long, long trail in on the more tame eastern slopes with my friend Trent's giant Rottweiler, Oso (earning his respect - or fear - forever).  Two of my fine slogging partners hadn't attempted this mountain yet, and we were working slowly on Scott's 14ers list as well as my own.  We decided that a good alpine snow climb or three were in order, and picked a beautiful weekend to give it a shot.  Scott drove in to town from Salt Lake to see his parents and climb, and Coby and I were more than ready to get out and start training for our upcoming Aconcagua trip with some alpine snow.

The day prior we had run Columbia and Harvard over the not-recommended Rabbit Ears Ridge, giving Coby a great snowboard descent down Harvard's south face slopes.  A good sleep under the stars later, we began hiking up the North Halfmoon drainage on Massive's west side.  It was a light snow year (97-98), and the trail was mostly dry even in mid-May at 10,000 feet.  The scenery along the pleasant trail to the middle basin was fabulous, and very few people had ventured back this far to mess it up with trash or poorly-selected camp sites.  After a short meal break overlooking Deer Mountain and points west, at a stupendous meadow and ledge system, we began climbing the large talus and boulder fields to the snow line in the upper basin.  Even though we'd brought them, we didn't need our snowshoes; the snow had settled into a beautiful firm corn, perfect for making quick time on.  I wished I'd brought my skiis (or had a sherpa to haul them and my boots, more correctly), looking up at the wonderful bowls and colouirs above.

I was dragging ass badly and have no idea why (perhaps it was the double summit the previous day), but I'm pretty glad thinking of it now.  We climbed a wide, 2000' couloir up to the 14000' level and the summit ridge, and turned south for the main summit.  The weather had been sunny and a little windy, but by the time we got to the ridge the wind was kicking up the col from behind us and blowing snow and ice crystals all over, which was particularly annoying when we did zigzags uphill instead of moving straight up the fall line.  On and over the ridge we were getting little squalls (like snow dust devils) and there wasn't anyplace to hide from it.

We hauled ourselves towards the summit, passing a climber with teles sticking out of his pack, on his way back down to his tent hidden somewhere below.  The view was beautiful but there were some medium altitude darker clouds from the arctic air push from Wyoming in all directions.  It looked like there was high rain in most of the valleys around us from micro-front collisions, but it was well away from the summits all around us.  We had awesome views of the Elks and the Maroon Bells while we were climbing, but as soon as we hit the ridge they (and just about everything else that direction) were suddenly obscured by dark, dropping clouds portending snowstorms and generally bad weather.  Several hours from treeline, this was a bad sign.  We (slowly) humped up to the summit and Scott changed socks while I had a peanut butter MRE pack for the energy I'd need to get me down.  The squalls continued but didn't seem too threatening.  We watched the telemarker carve some beautiful turns back down the col, then started moving along the 1/2 mile ridge towards the south summit saddle.  Coby was moving pretty quickly, probably 100m ahead of me, with Scott about 35m ahead.  I was moving almost like a zombie (god only knows why, but that's what I looked like in the pictures) and had gotten to just below the second summit, about 14400', and started to move up.

I got about two slow steps up, when a crazed sounding voice made me look up the hill and see Scott, sans pack and ice axe, running down the hill towards me shouting "Lightning!  There's lightning!"  He moved around me to the left and I slowly swung around to watch him, thinking "he cracked.  must be the altitude."  I asked "Lightning?  Where?" as he ran past, and he yelled behind him "Everywheeeerrrreee!" as he continued down the side of the ridge to crouch by a rock.  I decided that he might be serious (took a second, I was thinking pretty slowly), so I ditched my pack and axe and joined him.  I asked again what was going on:  "Were there strikes on the summits?"  He replied "No, it was all over me!  I could feel it on my head and between my snowshoes [on his pack] and when it started going down my spine I dropped everything and came down.  We can't go back up there.  We'll have to go down below the top to get around it."

Well, his pack was up there and I saw Coby walking along the ridge a couple of hundred meters farther along.  I decided it was probably St Elmo's Fire and that we had to just boogie up and over.  The lower ridge was basically a cliff and didn't look like somewhere we really wanted to be, anyway.  Well, we waited a minute or two, then ran the rest of the ridge to where it turned down towards the saddle, where Coby was waiting for us.

His story, paraphrased:  'I was walking along and felt, like, ice crystals hitting me in the face.  Then, they were hitting me in the head and on my hands, which was strange cause I was wearing a hat and gloves.  My ice axe started humming, and I thought it was like wind whistling by it or just the altitude getting to me.  So I put it behind my leg to try to quiet it down.'

We all had a good laugh about it, even then, figuring out how serious it could have been.  This is still one of those stories that tingles the hair on my neck when I'm sitting around over a beer with Scotty, telling our mountain horror stories and suffer-puppy tales.  Well, we survived, but remember that blowing snow squalls can produce dangerous static build up.� When you're the only attenuator around, plasma can build up quickly above you and give you a serious ground charge lightning strike.  And 480,000 volts is nothing to play with.  I figure I didn't get anything because I was moving so damn slowly.