Went for a casual hike with 2 of my brothers. I'm the oldest , and they were about 20 and 14. We decided to climb up this small rocky mountain, not a proper mountain more like a really big hill of giant boulders, but surrounded by flat plains with few trees. There were some sketchy areas while we were getting to the top, like angled areas covered in lichen over a several hundred feet drop onto more rocks. But we made it to the top just fine.
Then a sudden afternoon storm came out of nowhere, and I mean from nowhere, because you can see weather coming from miles away out there, since it's just plains and no trees, you can see very far. Anyway the rain meant that we couldn't go back down the way we came, because lichen is very slippery when it's wet and that drop would be lethal. If it was just me then I'd have done it very carefully, but I wasn't gonna watch either of them fall. So we were just gonna wait it out, it was still warm and a warm rain so not bad at all, even though there was no cover up there.
Then my brother and I looked at each other (we both have long hair) and saw it was standing straight up, and realized what danger we were in. We'd both seen lightning explode a tree from up close when we were kids, very hot and blinding white, seemed like it lasted for a long time, knocked us down. Anyway we played it cool so the youngest wouldn't panic while quickly looking for a way to get down lower.
I found a big jump, maybe 10 feet down and 10 feet across, over a deep crevice between two solid stone walls that I couldn't see the bottom of. Again, not that crazy, but with the rain and being worried about my younger brothers, I was pretty nervous though I was careful not to show it, for their sake. Anyway I beckoned them over and made the jump first, said follow me. I told the youngest to go first and I got ready to jump out and catch him if I needed to. Not sure if it would have helped much, but I was going to try. Fortunately, he made it perfectly.
