An avid Austrian hiker has had a lucky escape in the US after a lightning bolt struck him directly in the back of his head and exited through his foot leaving him with severe burns.
Mathias Steinhuber had just reached the 9,000-foot summit of the Sierra Nevada mountain range ahead of his companions when he raised his arms for a picture and was struck.
The electricity shot through his body and exited through his shoe. He described being too stunned to know what had happened.
“It was like in a dream,” Mr Steinhuber said from the University of California, Davis Hospital Burn Centre.
“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.”
Mr 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.
Mr Steinhuber had burns throughout his body and was struggling to walk when a helicopter crew rescued him on Tuesday (local time) 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, California, near Lake Tahoe.
Ms Elvidge said she, Mr Steinhuber and his girlfriend, Kathrin Klausner, were hiking from Donner Summit to Squaw Valley and that all are avid hikers.
‘It was like an explosion’
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