Hiker hurt but survives being struck by lightning

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An Austrian man hiking 9,000 feet up in the Sierra Nevada was on a peak taking a photo when he was struck by a lightning bolt that blasted away his clothes, burned a hole in one of his shoes and left him with severe burns.

Mathias Steinhuber, who was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with his girlfriend and their friend, had an entry wound on his head and an exit wound on his foot.

“It was like in a dream,” Steinhuber said in an interview at the University of California, Davis Hospital Burn Center. “I woke up. I had blood everywhere, my clothes were ripped apart. At some distance I heard my girlfriend scream my name. My first conclusion was that I probably fell down the mountain.”

Steinhuber said he doesn’t remember being struck. While he could see a thunderstorm far in the distance, he said there was no rain or lightning nearby.

Steinhuber had burns throughout his body and was struggling to walk when a helicopter crew rescued him Tuesday from an exposed peak among the rugged mountains near Donner Summit, the California Highway Patrol Valley Air Operations said.

The couple from Innsbruck, Austria, was visiting a friend, Carla Elvidge, in Truckee, Calif., near Lake Tahoe. Elvidge said she, Steinhuber and his girlfriend, Kathrin Klausner, were hiking from Donner Summit to Squaw Valley and that all are avid hikers.

Steinhuber was hiking ahead of his friends and had reached the top of Tinkers Knob, a bare peak with sweeping views of the surrounding mountains and the forests below.

“He was taking a picture and the next thing I know, I see this white flash, like an explosion,” Elvidge said in a phone interview from Fairfield, Calif.