My Friend and I Got Caught in a Storm During a Hike. Who’s to Blame?

Published April 5, 2024 07:00AM

My friend and I recently went on a three-day backpacking trip together, which involved several sections of alpine terrain. She’s afraid of lightning to the point where she perseverates about it, even though the risk of being hit by lightning is extremely small. There’s a reason that “you’re more likely to be hit by lightning” is a common phrase. I promised that we would do everything we could to be below the treeline in the afternoons, when storms tend to come in. The weather ended up being overcast but not stormy for the first two days, which was too bad because we couldn’t really take in the views.

On our last morning, we slept in, and when we woke up the weather was nicer than it had been the whole time. It seemed like a waste to have come all that way and then hurry back when everything was perfect, so she agreed to add on an extra short hike up to a view point before we started back to the trailhead. It was only two miles so it shouldn’t have added more than an hour or so to our hiking for the day.

She kept pulling out her phone while we were hiking to check the time, which irritated me, because one of my pet peeves is people looking at their phones when we’re trying to be present together. Because I was irritated, I was distracted, and we ended up missing a turn and going on a longer route. This led to us being caught in a brief thunderstorm and she freaked out. It passed in about 15 minutes and we were fine. I tried to explain to her that by obsessing over bad weather, she had actually caused us to be caught in bad weather, and if she could try to let her fears go, we would have a much better time. This was a mistake on my part, because she wasn’t in the mood for feedback. She’s mad at me for getting lost, and I’m annoyed because I think she owes me an apology, too. How do we get past this?

What do you think your friend should apologize for? I’m serious; take a moment and think about what you’re expecting, and what would feel fair. Should she apologize for saying that being high on a mountain in stormy weather would make her panic, and then panicking when that exact thing happened? Should she apologize for agreeing to an extra hike on the condition that it was short, then being worried when it stretched longer? Should she apologize for the fact that you blamed her for the missed turn, when it sounds like you were the one who made an error? Sure, she was checking her phone, and that can be totally annoying. If you plan more backpacking trips together, you can have a conversation about how phone-checking in nature stresses you out, and maybe ask if she could check a watch instead. But it would be just as reasonable for her to ask you to try to get over your phone hangup, because traveling together is about compromise, and in the scheme of things, glancing at a phone is not that big of a deal. If that were your biggest challenge when hiking together, I’d say you were a very compatible pair.

I don’t think your friend should be mad at you for missing the turn. Part of the unspoken agreement of having outdoor adventures with pals is that you’re going to try your best, but mistakes happen, and you’ll deal with whatever situations arise together. But I think that by framing her anger as being about the missed turn, you’re creating a red herring; you’re using that to downplay the very real other things that I suspect she’s more annoyed about, like the fact that—by the sound of it—you pressured her to go on an alpine hike later in the day than she was comfortable with, and then held her responsible for a turn that you yourself missed. I’ll add that, while it does sound like your friend struggles with a fear of lightning, her logic isn’t actually wrong. Getting struck by lightning may be extremely rare, but when you’re in a high place without shelter during an electrical storm, you’re putting yourself in the proximate occasion of a big zap.

As for the fact that your friend wasn’t in the mood for feedback, I’m not surprised. You were hardly offering her a caring, compassionate insight that might make her life better. You were basically saying, “Here’s what I don’t like about you. Here’s what you should change about yourself for me.”

So, speaking of feedback, here’s my advice for you: instead of waiting for your friend to apologize, try apologizing first. After all, you’re having a conflict with someone you care about, and apologizing first is a surefire way to de-escalate; it shows that you’re more invested in repairing the friendship than in protecting your own ego. If you come forward and say something like, “Hey, I’m really sorry that I took my irritation out on you, and blamed you for getting caught in the storm. That wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t true. The truth is, I was just frustrated, because I care about you having a good time, and the whole reason I wanted to add the hike on the last day was so that our trip could end on a good note. It’s important to me for you to feel like I have your back,” you’re making an opening for her to respond with honesty and compassion, too. (Of course, don’t offer an apology that’s not true; she’ll see through it, and feel demeaned. But if you sit with your feelings, and try to figure out what went wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised if you came up with something along those lines.)

At that point, the ball is in your friend’s court, and I hope she’ll respond with similar grace. Depending on how the conversation goes, you might decide that it’s better to take a break from backpacking together, at least for a little while. But now that you’re off the mountain, and far from the threat of lightning, you’ll probably both start feeling better quickly. That’s part of the nature of backcountry trips: you go, you learn, you change. I know you would both do things differently in the future—and I hope that you get that chance.