Worst Weather

[Tony]

I was thinking earlier about the worst weather i've experienced while out camping, branches getting ripped off trees, the odd tree going over, tent pegs coming out and all that, it was quite rough, although calm and bright in the morning. On another occasion we were at Swyns (haven't seen him on here for ages, anyone know how he's doing?) place for a Mini Moot and the weather picked up, quite a few ended up in the barn, there were trees going over there as well.

So, what experiences have you had? I know from talking to people that there's some amazing stories so come on, let's hear them

 

[blacktimberwolf]

The worst weather I have ever camped out in was back in 81 on a Brecon Beacon hillside in October. A gale, nae a tempest arrived in the middle of the night & just lifted the tent off the ground, ripping out the tent pegs. There was no way I could have put up that tent again in the dark with that wind & rain so I spent the rest of the night sort of laying half in & half out of the tent trying to stop it flying away. Fortunately I had a synthetic sleeping bag which kept me warm enough, I even managed to nod off now & again,even though I was drenched & repeatedly whipped by a wet fly sheet.. I had a dog with me who was snug & dry at the back end of the tent & oblivious to the gravity of the situation........he did help to keep the back end of the tent down though ............Happy times.

 

[petrochemicals]

first point, after last summer what was last years Moot like ?

Massive night time thunder and lightening is good fun ecoing around the valleys. Deluges in the lake district by Coniston water where the scout camp down the hill by the lake ended up floating on there airbeds. Hurricane force winds in North Wales with tents blowing away.

The worst weather I have heard about on a regular basis is on the isle of skye where carravanners plan their escape route through the sky vents, whilst others use ground anchors and cargo straps to go over their caravans to lash them down, as they get blown over on a regular basis !

 

[treadlightly]

A week on the Pembrokeshire coast with the family five years ago. Beautiful campsite overlooking the sea with a fire pit - all set up for a lovely break. The weather had other ideas. It blew a gale and chucked it down all week. Took my son and I two hours to put up a tentipi which then needed lashing down with the tarp I had planned to use over the fire area. Every night, as we lay in bed watching the tent being pulled this way and that, my missus said she was convinced it was going into orbit. She hasn't been camping since.


Backpacking with my son on the north norfolk coast path two years ago. First night, big, big winds which had the ali tent pole in the small tipi we were in almost bending double, so that the tent fabric was almost on our faces. Miraculously the tent survived. I cut a strong wooden pole for the next night.

 

[Bushwhacker]

Australia - temperature over 40 deg C, high winds, lots of dust. Hellish.

 

[Tony]

Moot last year was fine, well as far as I remember, some issues with wind derived from snoring but other than that just some rain

I've just been reminded about a tent in the lakes during a storm, spent most of the night getting smashed by the tent getting laid flat, I can feel it now, thwack, thwack, thwack.........

 

[Tony]

Australia - temperature over 40 deg C, high winds, lots of dust. Hellish.

Yeah, that sounds horrid... Just the 40 deg let alone wind and dust..

 

[Bushwhacker]

Yeah, that sounds horrid... Just the 40 deg let alone wind and dust..

You just can't get away from the heat. Worst thing is wanting an ice cold drink, yet the water supply is also warm. It's like torture!

 

[Gray]

Brecons 1984/5 ish. Minus god knows what, knee deep snow, gale force winds, blizzards,snow drifts. That was rough, 2 weeks we were there,I loved it lol

 

[Teepee]

I was camped below Cairngorm a few years ago by Loch Avon backpacking. The wind was howling, driving rain in all directions and picking swathes of water up off the lake and dropping it on my tarp. It rained solid for 24 hours

I spent the night having the tarp pushed flat against me. I woke up in inches of floodwater, everything wet where I never though it would even be possible to flood.



I spent a week camping in Devon in the 90's-it rained for 7 days non-stop and on the 7th day the ground gave up. Came back from the pub to find 3 feet of water in the tent. We all left the next day to bail to a much drier South wales and the road out had been washed away

 

[Biker]

On the way back from Cornwall on a family holiday we met up with some biker mates in the New Forest. Set up the tents in a lovely natural bowl (uh ohhh, I hear you mutter) During the evening there was an accident so my wife took the casualty to hospital in the car and I stayed at camp with my two daughters, aged 4 & 6 at the time. Then the rain came and didn't stop. Once the natural bowl started to get waterlogged I figured it was time for drastic measures. Everyone else retired to the only other car and piled in that leaving their tents etc to fate. So I took down the inner tent leaving just the flysheet up and found a one of those combined benches and tables things you see in camp site eating areas and dragged that into the the flysheet tent.

Without the car to stash all the stuff in it meant I had to juggle loading the table and benches with kit and make two beds for the girls on top. I spent the rest of the long night sat on the bench trying to sleep resting my head on my knees. Woke at 3am to find 2 inches of water all over the ground. My feet were resting in the lid of a cool box we had.

Anyway wife got back at 7am and girl who had the accident couldn't wear her full face crash helmet due to the flash burns she'd got when her gaz cooker decided to explode (another story). So I had to ride her 1960's vintage BSA Goldstar Cafe racer with drop handlebars all the way back to Kent. The first 300yards was fun after that I hated it. Her helmet was two sizes too small for me as well.

At the time I was riding I reminded myself one day I'll look back at this event and laugh.... 14 years later all I can raise is a wry smile.

 

[mrcharly]

hmm - first ever trip to the lakes, new saunders spacepacker tent. Just got it set up when blizzard hit. Pushed the tent down completely flat until the pole snapped. I was smart enough to try not walking off in zero visibility and heavy snow, spent the night in my sleeping back under a gorse bush, woke up to frozen boots filled with snow.

Saunders replaced the pole free of charge with a note saying "Our poles don't break, yours must have been defective.". Terrific chap.

 

[Stringmaker]

At first I thought I had nothing to contribute to this thread but then it all came flooding back......

I was on an Outward Bound course in the Lake District 30 years ago, the culmination of which was a four day self supported hike within our two tent groups of 6 (3 per tent). We were driven out to our start point and then dropped off to walk back. The route was planned and mapped and we had everything organised nicely. Within an hour of starting, one of the guys in my group dropped out with a chest infection and so the two of us had to man up and carry tent/food/kit for three.

The whole thing set us back a couple of hours (no mobile phones in them days sonny!) so were late back on the path and then it started to rain. It wasn't the biblical deluge stuff some of you have endured but it didn't stop for the whole four days. The tent we had was a Vango cotton thing with an inner and I was carrying it, as it got heavier and heavier. Even now, 30 years later I can remember the whole episode, along with navigating in rain and mist on top of the Langdales by bearing and cairn spotting.

By the end of the trip we smelt worse than the sheep...

 

[Nonsuch]

Camped one August evening up at Sprinkling Tarn in the Lakes - on the near-island in the tarn. Strolled up Scafell Pike, with the weather getting wetter then back for dinner to the camp spot. Took my Vango Spirit 300+ tunnel tent for a spacious experience. Pitched it carefully into the wind. The wind got up during the night, became very gusty, and shifted direction 90 degrees. By 11pm the three hoop poles were all seriously bent and I spent the rest of the night holding up the tent. A decent tent camped nearby was unharmed but mine was trashed. Staggered down blearily in the morning. I have never spent a night in a Vango tent since, nor really trusted a tunnel design, but decent ones seem to do OK in the Arctic and I am sure a Hilleberg would have take it in its stride.

Vango initially didn't want to know but changed their minds when I said I might publicise the experience on this and other forums.

That was also the trip when I realised that Paramo smocks don't "pump themselves dry overnight". Mine was like a wet sponge when I put it on in the morning...

 

[Hile_Troy]

Both several years ago, first, camping in my mates back garden, -15 and I woke up with ice on the inside of my tent inner, the condensation from my breath had frozen and was dropping in flakes onto my sleeping bag. I was toasty warm though in an Ajungilak 3 season bag.

The other was a DofE camp, lashing it down with rain and some clown who didn't know how to work a Camping Gaz Bluet stove, looked at the dimple in the top of the gas can, saw the spike under the stove top, put 2 and 2 together and came up with 22... He pushed the canister onto the spike... all this within a foot of an already assembled, and lit, stove.

The resulting fireball engulfed the unfortunate child's head, removed his eyebrows and half his hair, set fire to the front of the Force Ten tent, melted his sleeping bag and singed his boots. Both the occupants of the tent retreated away from the fire trying to get out of the back of the tent, where there was no door. Eventually the rest of the group ripped the top of the tent away leaving the groundsheet still pegged to the ground.

The burner from the stove was found in the morning, 100 metres away. I learned from that, that ignorance coupled with stupidity is way scarier than the weather.

I know that isn't a weather related story, but it is my worst outdoors, camping story.

 

[Shewie]

I arranged a mini meet in Yorkshire a few years ago, in a well established plantation with a good number of old broad leaf species mixed in. The weather had been deteriorating as the evening went on with strong winds blowing through, after chilling by the fire we retired to our hammocks, we'd literally been in bed five minutes when we heard the crash of a tree come down. It was quite funny at first as we shouted and laughed about it over the roar of the wind, but when it happened again a few minutes later it much closer than we liked. When the third or fourth tree came down we called it a night and packed up as fast as we could. The drive home was entertaining dodgng wheelie bins and more fallen trees. I went back to the site a couple of days later and counted at least half a dozen downed pines, none of them would have actually hit us but I think we'd made the right decision.

Another memorable trip was this one, it was never dangerous but I hardly slept all night.

 

[leon-1]

Catterick, we were told it went down to -28, wading through snow for mile upon mile for a week. winter 1986-1987.

South Georgia, -40'C, 100mph winds, blizzard and white out, digging in a blacks two man tent and not capable of seeing someone no more than 3 feet away, 1990.

Wales, Brecon Beacons, Fan Fawr white out and blizzard, January 1993.

Tropical storm, Brunei, Ulu Tutong, 1996.

Wales, Elan Valley, rain and wind. Took Neil and I a long time (nearly 3 hours till we didn't have to constantly watch it) to get a fire going. 2000.

Cornwall, rain, wind, main shelter trying to fly away snapped a guy rope with 1000lb breaking strain, Neil and I trying to pin everything down in 69mph winds with the rain hammering down. Snapped a 9 inch diameter beech tree off 10 inches from the ground and threw it 12 feet. All whilst trying to run a course, 3 days ago.

 

[Tiley]

The first episode took place on the Nollen Spur on the Monch in the Bernese Oberland. We were about a third of the way up when all the metal bits of our gear started buzzing quietly. It was oppressively hot with not a breath of wind. Needless to say, in the next few minutes, we were in the teeth of a storm of truly Biblical proportions: rain lashing down, deafening rumbles of thunder and lightning stabbing wildly around us. We got out the group shelter and were just going to wrap ourselves in it when a rock no more than about ten feet away was struck by lightning and disintegrated. We decided to throw caution to the wind and beat a very hasty retreat to the hut, harried all the way by the heaviest rain I've experienced in some twenty or so seasons in the Alps. The storm raged all day, finally petering out as night drew on. The next day was cool, clear, beautifully sunny and calm and we topped out without any hitches.

The other was while sailing around the Lycian coast of Turkey one August. We had gone there on the promise of the Meltemi, a wind that blew in the afternoon and made the whole trip sound fantastic. Instead, we had no wind of any description - just heat in the high thirties and matching humidity. The worst was at night when there seemed to be little let up in the uncomfortably high temperatures. I can remember slinging my hammock under the boom of the boat and just lying there, unable to sleep, sweating quietly... It bred in me a certain hatred of the Mediterranean - not even the sea is cool enough to be refreshing and it is so, so salty!

I've had quite a few gnarly moments with very cold weather too but, since I actually like the cold - and any 'full-on' conditions, come to think of it - I don't really consider them to be 'worst weather', more 'best fun weather'. But then, as with everything, it's each to his or her own!

 

[Graywolf]

My first experience of camping in bad weather when I was either 14/15 on my own,it was high winds and torrential rain pegs getting pulled out,this was in New Zealand.
Next would have to be when I was backpacking around the south island of new Zealand and got caught out in a blizzard,whiteout
Next was in Australia,Temp in 40s and sand storms.
Next was in Israel,camping in the Negev Desert same again Temps in the 40s and sand storms,but at the time I was more worried about the leopards.

But didn't mind any of these really,but really hated time spent in jungle enviroments.

 

[Man of Tanith]

Three or four years ago a mate and I went camping in December just up my permission so quite local.
Friday night arrives and I get a lif up to the site. Its what you might consider a little chilly but nothing too bad.
Mate arrives we set up camp and get fire lit etc.
Sleep well great time.
Saturday we experience a blizzard and two foot of snow. Sensibly we agree that as we are there have a nice warm fire and plenty of grub we will stay and walk back on the sunday as originally planned.
Sunday morning comes and there is ice on my bivi bag in a line where my breath has been going.
My face Is half numb and its ruddy freezing. We packed up and it took us two and half hours to walk back. From the permission kt usually takes an hour to get back on foot from.
Turns out it had hit minus 17 the Saturday night. And I had bells palsy on the numb side of my face so a week off sick from work.

I still enjoyed it though which is the main thing