By Cayenn Landau
AURORA, Sevier County—When Jacob and Kade Johnson set off with a group of 90 youth from the Salina Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a pioneer trek, they weren’t expecting to undergo an 1840s-style battle with the elements.
But that was exactly what happened when lightning struck at three points along the trail, sending the teenagers in waves to hospitals in surrounding counties.
“When you have your entire community’s youth affected, it affects everyone,” said Nanci Johnson, Jacob’s and Kade’s mom. “The aftermath has included more gratitude, more faith and more love.”
“Trek” is the colloquial term for a backpacking trip in Salina Canyon that takes place every two to three years, dedicated to recreating the experience of the Utah pioneers.
The drive to the unmarked East Desert Trail on the morning of June 27 was sunny and uneventful; Kade fell asleep in the car on the way there.
“Before we started hiking, we had a devotional and ate some lunch,” Jacob said. “We were assigned into groups of about 10 or 12, with two leaders. The point was to make sure we (all) didn’t leave at the same time.
“It started raining right as we ate lunch. I put a garbage bag on as the rain started coming down.”
The storm “came in quick,” Nanci added. By 1:45 p.m., Kade’s group trailed Jacob’s. The path grew increasingly wet and muddy as the storm picked up. Lightning flashed around the canyon, but aside from some hemming and hawing on what direction to go given the downpour, it didn’t set off alarm bells for the hikers or group leaders.
“We work on a farm, so sometimes there’s some pretty big lightning storms,” Jacob said. “I was thinking, ‘How am I gonna sleep tonight?’”
The 30 group leaders were alerted by radio that they needed to move their vehicles, given flooding warnings being sent through the area.
“So at this point, after some of the leaders had left, we kind of mixed our groups into one big line. We just kept walking, we were singing. It was pretty stretched out,” Kade said.
“I was kind of in the front,” Jacob continued. “Me and this other guy were the only ones who had graduated [high school]. I remember talking to him about how one of the leaders put him in charge of his group.”
It was after the two had chatted together for a few minutes through the mud and rain that Jacob heard an explosion. “I blacked out and hit the ground,” he said.
In a video taken by another youth that captures the moment the lightning struck, shouts — then screams—permeate the group as panic sets in. The camera pans to Jacob, lying unmoving in the dirt.
“I felt a shock in the back of my head,” Kade said. “My first thought was, ‘That was super cool.’ But then that changed, obviously. Everyone was standing there, and being like, ‘What happened?’ and then someone screamed to the leader [Kade and Jacob’s uncle], ‘Dan, someone’s down!’”.
“It was me,” Jacob said. “I was unconscious.”
When Kade heard, he ran to his older brother, who at that point was groggily waking up as several group leaders checked his vitals and prayed over him.
“I remember thinking, Am I dead? Is this it?’” Jacob said. “I knew I had more to do in this world. I remember seeing Kade and just thinking how much my family loves me, and how much I don’t want to leave them yet.”
After about 3 minutes, Jacob was carried into a truck owned by one of the leaders who had driven vehicles closer to the trail and taken to the Emery/Price Exit off I-70.
There ambulances that had been called by group leaders waited. Seven of the group were determined to need immediate medical attention, including Jacob, who was showing signs of hypothermia, shock and low blood pressure. He was driven to the Sevier Valley Hospital in Richfield Hospital.
By this time the rest of the group, Kade included, had been taken to the exit. They waited under a clump of trees by an underpass to get picked up.
“There was a lot of just sitting there, a lot of time to think,” Kade said. “I had a lot of deep thoughts. Once I heard he [Jacob] was gonna be okay, I was still worried, but I was also thinking about my own life. If I had been hit, did I think the Heavenly Father was proud of what I was doing in my life? Was I ready to go? Did I still have to fine-tune my life a little? There was a lot of talking, a lot of forced conversation. We didn’t know what to say.”
“That day was my 40th birthday,” Nanci added. “I was up north with my sisters celebrating when I got the phone call from my husband… He just said, ‘Hon, there’s been a lightning strike on Trek, it hit Jacob, and I don’t know where they’re taking him yet.’
“I felt terror. It’s really hard to know one of your kids is in that kind of situation. I grabbed hands with my sisters and we prayed for safety and love.”
Nanci said the running theory about the strike was that a lightning bolt forked into prongs, striking the trail, but no people, at three points.
Because no one showed entry or exit wounds from the strike, the consensus was that the water on the trail acted as a conduit; nearly everyone walking felt some kind of physical jolt.
Over the next few hours and into the evening, she said, nearly everyone ended up going to the hospital to get checked out as a precaution. That’s what caused the patient surge at Gunnison Valley Hospital. All of the youth were discharged by the next morning.
Jacob emphasized that although the incident was emotional to process, it had also been a bonding force for everyone in the group.
“We’ve been able to get together and talk about our experiences,” he said. “It’s been nice to relate together and understand what we went through.”
“There were a lot of people processing the event, and also at the same time, connecting the dots of the miracles that happened,” Nanci said of the aftermath.
One of the biggest things that has stuck with her personally was a conversation she had with a doctor who had tended to Jacob in the ER. “He called me close to midnight, after his shift,” she said. “He said, “I’m the doctor that treated Jacob. He should not be okay, but everything checked out. So I’m calling to make sure.’”
Aside from a concussion, Jacob was fine, Nanci assured him. But the doctor couldn’t wrap his head around it.
“He was like, ‘I medically cannot explain this. Your son should not be alive. This is truly a miracle.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I know that too.’”
