Ryan Santistevan, and Alden Woods

The Republic | azcentral.com

This time, they were going to do it. They were going to climb the mountain.

They had tried once before. The snow had forced them to turn around.

Now it was summer, a Wednesday in July. They stuffed their backpacks — water bottles, protein bars and sweatshirts for the chill at the summit — and headed north.

David Lyons, 18, drove. Jaxson Baxter, 17, tucked himself into the back seat with a book. In the passenger’s seat was Wade Young.

Wade, 17, had already graduated and was on his way to college in the fall.

David and Wade sang along with the radio, their voices filling the car all the way to the side of the San Francisco Peaks.

At more than 12,000 feet, Humphreys Peak is the highest of the volcanic peaks. It’s the highest point in Arizona, but the hike to the summit can be done by an amateur in good shape. It’s just 5 miles from the parking lot to the top.

And the top can be glorious. The view stretches for 60 miles when it isn’t storming.

David, Jaxson and Wade parked the car and started up the trail. They stopped for pictures, stopped for a snack and kept climbing into the clouds.

At the peak, they shivered in their rain-soaked sweatshirts. Hail bounced off the rocks. But they had made it. They bumped fists among them, one, two, three.

Then the lightning hit.

Wade Young was the kind of guy who made a lot of friends.

Jaxson first met him in sophomore chemistry at Corona del Sol High School in Tempe.

Class started with a getting-to-know-you game, where each student had to introduce himself or herself, then recite the names of the people before.

As the list grew longer, a lot of students struggled to remember the names, until they reached Wade Young, at the end of the line.

Wade joyfully called out every name in the room. No problem.

Wade was fit enough to bounce around all day, work out, sing and dance, climb a mountain.

When he played volleyball, he tried to get everyone else to play, too. When he worked out, he talked his friends into joining him. He showed them how to load the weights and hold their posture.

He sang in Jaztecs, the school’s top choir. Between his energy and his shock of red hair, people couldn’t ignore him.

He’d stay up until 5 a.m. chatting with friends. But he was always wide awake for early choir practice. He and a friend scheduled their “daily Wade hug” — 6:20 a.m., without fail.

On one of those early high school mornings, Wade was in a car accident, another friend remembered, just bad enough to leave rope burns on his shoulder from the seat belt. Still, he smiled.

In the fall, David and Wade took a trip to Sedona’s Slide Rock. They approached the top of a steep cliff, one of the red-rock canyon’s famous plunges into the water.

David didn’t have the confidence for cliff-jumping. So Wade went first.

After they were both finally grinning in the water, a stranger peered over the edge, curious but scared. Wade cheered him on.

David would never forget it. Up there was a complete stranger, and down here was Wade, calling to him to join in the fun — it’s great, you can do it, go for it.

Wade was the kind of guy who made other people want to smile, too.

The stranger stepped to the edge and jumped.

Summer came, and Wade graduated. He had made it into the honors college at Arizona State University and would start at the Polytechnic Campus in the fall. Jaxson and David had another year left at Corona.

They wanted to stay close, but weren’t sure how.

Once we all get to college, they figured, we can share a house together. But that was another year off. High school friendships can be fleeting. By July, the three hadn’t seen each other once since graduation.

Wade worked nights at a seafood restaurant, stealing a few last weeks before college for time with his family and a new girlfriend.

Jaxson and David worked at a pizza place, Grimaldi’s. A favorite manager had transferred to the Flagstaff shop, so on a Monday in July, three friends hatched a plan.

They would get together Wednesday. Wade and David had tried to climb Humphreys Peak once before. This time, they’d finish it. On the way back down, they’d stop at Grimaldi’s for pizza.

They left at 6:30 a.m., just after sunrise, and headed north, Wade and David singing over the radio. Out of Phoenix, past the exit for Sedona and up, into the forest, into Flagstaff — a quick stop at Starbucks to refuel — then on through the forest and up the side of the mountain.

Sometime after 9 a.m., they crunched into the cinder-covered parking lot below the Snowbowl ski lodges. They grabbed their packs and left the car behind.

Partway up the Humphreys Trail, there’s a creaky metal stand with a registry book inside.

Hikers climbing the peak sign-in here, scribbling down the date, names of each hiker, their home ZIP code and how far they plan on hiking. It’s there partly for memory, partly for safety — if someone has to come looking for you, they know where you were headed.

“Remember,” a message on each page asks. “Pack it in, pack it out.”

Jaxson scribbled their information in the register, and they started up the mountain.

Humphreys Peak Trail starts out across Hart Prairie, stretching away below the Snowbowl ski lifts. It’s grassy and peaceful on a sunny summer day. The dirt path is only a few feet wide, but unmistakable, trampled by so many hiking boots.

“Then you get into trees and switchbacks,” said Heather Jones, a veteran Humphreys Peak hiker. “You’re steadily climbing up.” Aspen, fir and ponderosa pine trees line the way.

Along the way, rockslides punctuate the forest. The steep boulder fields clear patches of sky, opening up the view.

Hikers wind their way through dozens of switchbacks. As the elevation rises, the temperature drops, even on summer days.

Around 11,000 feet above sea level, the trees grow stunted to the ground. Five hundred feet higher, they’re gone.

The trail here turns to jagged black rock, remnants of the mountain’s volcanic past. A false peak beckons, teasing hikers that the end is near. There’s still a mile to go.

The top of the peak sits above the treeline, Arizona’s only stretch of true tundra. Tiny flowers lace their blossoms among the rocks, the species unique in all the world to this one spot in the sky.

“It’s very barren up there. Very rocky. Pretty intense,” said Tom Hines, a Flagstaff resident who’s hiked Humphreys Peak more than a dozen times. “It’s a difficult hike.”

At last, there is the top, where another wooden sign congratulates those who have made it: “Humphreys Peak, 12,633 ft.”

Up here, where the peak can disappear into storm clouds, Hines has felt electricity swarm around him, rising through his boots and running through his limbs.

On other days, it’s clear. Flagstaff shrinks into the horizon, and smaller peaks dot the view. Hikers can see both rims of the Grand Canyon — the state’s highest mountain and its greatest chasm, within sight of each other.

The summit leaves hikers exposed. Past hikers have built a rock wall to hide behind in case storms hit. They come without warning and can blow people off the peak.

Common advice is to get below the treeline before the midday weather rolls across the horizon.

“Storms come up really quickly there. You can go from sunny and 15 minutes later, it’s pouring,” Hines said. “There’s a lot of lightning up there.”

The sky was clear that morning as Wade, Jaxson and David made their way up the trail. They moved slowly, planning a future together as they climbed. They would spend college together, they decided. Nothing had to change.

They passed one of the open rock fields that spilled down the mountainside. Jaxson and David stood in the middle. Wade snapped a picture. They kept climbing, following the wood trail signs that pointed only one way — up.

“We weren't doing it to make it in record time,” David said later. “We were doing it for us.”

On their way up, they passed other hikers coming down. Morning had turned to afternoon.

Wade stopped an hour before the summit, where the view opened to the peak above.

He pulled out his phone and took another photo. In it, clouds were drifting behind the mountain. They noticed only the view.

The rain started as they rose above the treeline. As they scrambled up, the weather changed. Trees no longer blocked the rain. Temperatures were plummeting. They pulled on the sweatshirts, which the rain soon soaked.

“Obviously, we couldn’t have been prepared for how cold or windy it really was up there,” David said. “All in all, we weren’t entirely prepared.”

It was a little before 1 p.m. They scrambled to the top, slipping over the wet rocks. It was colder than they expected. The wind blew harder. But they made it.

Rain slapped against them as they bumped fists. Jaxson, then David, then Wade.

Then, lightning struck the peak.

Sky to mountain in maybe 10 millionths of a second. Electricity shook the ground, throwing all three to the rocks.

Jaxson blacked out. He woke up. He couldn’t move his legs or his right arm.

Wade lay by the summit signpost. He didn’t move.

David rushed to him, then ran to grab his phone to call 911.

The cellular connection was spotty. The dispatcher struggled to make out what he was saying, with the call dropping again and again.

“Humphreys Peak,” David shouted. “We got shocked by lightning.”

Then, “I don’t know if he’s breathing.” The dispatcher asked him again, to be sure.

“I don’t think he is.”

The two struggled to roll Wade onto his back. David handed over the phone, and the dispatcher directed him to start CPR.

Jason Lurkins knows Humphreys Peak well.

He had just climbed it in June, along with 250 police officers and their families, part of a rally to honor fallen police officers. The weather was clear and the hike was smooth.

A patrol sergeant with the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, Lurkins was the on-call search-and-rescue coordinator that Wednesday afternoon.

He was finishing morning paperwork at his desk when the rain started.

He turned to look out his office window: Through the parking lot, past a new row of apartments, behind Buffalo Park and Mount Elden, he could see the hulking San Francisco Peaks 15 miles away.

The slopes rose into the sky. But the mountain was cloaked in clouds.

Later, after the storm cleared, meteorologists would report 106 lightning strikes reached the ground that day in the area around the peaks.

“It was right in the heart of this storm,” Lurkins said later. On an afternoon in the monsoon, the peak was a lightning rod. Nobody should have been up there.

As he packed to head home, a call came in to Coconino County dispatch. The radio crackled. Reception was fuzzy and information was scarce, but Lurkins knew what he heard.

Struck by lightning. Humphreys Peak. CPR.

He didn’t wait.

“We skipped the normal,” he said. “I knew that this was going to need to have search-and-rescue to get these people off.”

He called the dispatcher directly, and she relayed the news: A storm had popped up above Humphreys Peak. Three boys had been struck by lightning. One was unresponsive.

Lurkins messaged his crew. Phones pinged across Flagstaff. His search-and-rescue volunteers were at work, or home with the kids, or enjoying another day of retirement.

Eighteen volunteers and emergency responders were available. Lurkins sent some to one of the lodge buildings at Snowbowl. The rest met at the search-and-rescue building in Flagstaff where they plotted their route up the mountain.

They would need a helicopter to do a rescue at the top, but the helicopters in the area wouldn’t fly. Lurkins checked in with the Weather Service office. There was too much lightning to send a team up, and the storm would last until 6 p.m.

It would be too dangerous to send a team up. They were going to have to wait.

Lurkins’ commander from the patrol division got on the phone to assist, talking to David.

“We can’t safely come to you,” he said. “It’s dangerous where you’re at. You need to get yourself off that mountain.”

Lurkins headed home to switch to his work truck. Outside his house, he looked to the east. He saw a gap in the clouds. Clear sky.

It had been almost two-and-a-half hours since the call came in. Now they had half an hour, he guessed. Forty-five minutes if they were lucky.

The rest of the crew was already at the ski lodge.

An off-road vehicle could carry a rescue crew and a medical team to the top of the ski area, around 10,200 feet. From there, they would have to go on foot.

Lurkins called a crew leader there.

“You can make the decision,” Lurkins said, “if you feel comfortable and safe.”

They made the decision.

A rescue crew and medical team piled onto the vehicle and pointed it uphill.

David handed over the phone and rolled Wade onto his back. Jaxson relayed the dispatcher’s instructions as David started CPR.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Wade still wasn’t breathing. Fifteen. Still nothing. Twenty minutes. Maybe as long as 25 — David isn’t sure.

At last, the phone rang again. It was Lurkins’ commander, calling them with instructions. David listened.

“We can’t safely come to you.”

“It’s dangerous where you’re at.”

“You need to get yourself off that mountain.”

They would have to leave Wade.

Out of choices, they turned downhill. Before they left, they took a sweater and draped it over Wade.

Jaxson leaned on his friend as the feeling trickled back into his legs. Rain had turned the dirt path into mud and the rocks slippery, but time ran quickly. Jaxson called his parents. David couldn’t make himself do the same.

“The further we got down,” Jaxson said, “it started to hit me more.”

On the way up, they had crossed dozens of other hikers. On the way down, they saw just two, a few years older. College, maybe.

Don’t go above the trees, David warned them. There’s lightning up there. They didn’t mention they had left Wade at the peak.

David and Jaxson kept descending. The rescue team kept climbing. They met at 10,800 feet.

As the crews helped David and Jaxson down toward the lodge and more medical help, Lurkins and a partner were headed up.

By now, it was almost 5 p.m. Helicopters had been unable to fly. Even with the ATV taking them partway up, the hike to the top could take two hours. By then it would be almost dark.

They should have waited until the next morning to do more.

But they kept going.

“We’re both fathers,” he said. “We knew how important it would be for us to get him off that mountain that night.”

By evening, the weather had cleared. A DPS helicopter from Kingman was ready to fly.

They found Wade at the summit, underneath the sign where he had fallen. His black backpack was still strapped over his shoulders. The sweater still covered his body.

The helicopter hovered above the rocks as Lurkins loaded Wade’s body into the cabin.

Lurkins climbed in, too.

By then, the only cloud left in the sky was a thin, distant line glowing orange in the sunset.

The helicopter lifted off the ridge and pulled away into the dark.

There’s a scar on Jaxson’s foot where the electricity ran through him.

The current coursed through his legs and torso, leaving a branching scar on his right hip. His legs are splotched with burns.

A few days after their hike, David and Jaxson sat on a bench outside their high school. They had spent the weekend at home with their parents. Their burns were healing. They were ready to talk about what had happened on the climb, and after.

David was released from the hospital Thursday, after doctors slowed his heart rate and treated burns on his legs. Jaxson was discharged the next day.

They drove south, away from the mountain, through the hills where they had sung along with Wade.

That night, Wade’s friends met at a Scottsdale church, where his youth group had organized a prayer service.

They didn’t know what else to do. So they talked about Wade.

His red hair. That strange ability to remember every name in the room. The way he urged people to try new things.

The two friends wish they hadn’t taken the risk. What happened to them on the mountain is still hard for them to comprehend, even to remember.

“Even though I remember the hike down, it is a daze,” Jaxson said.

Now, when Jaxson and David remember, they think of the things that won’t be happening.

No staying in touch in spite of graduation. No house together in college. No more spontaneous trips.

But when Jaxson and David talk about the last day they spent with Wade Young, they remember something else, too.

They remember a day they wound their way into the forest, up the switchbacks, above the treeline and all the way to the top.

And they remind each other, now, that they remember this about Wade.

He was smiling.