I arrived at North Carolina’s DuPont State Park at noon, and the thunderstorm was just beginning.
To be fair, I tried to avoid this. I wanted to get a bright and early start, mountain bike through the cool, dry morning hours, then be back at the car by the time the afternoon storms began, as has become normal this summer in the Southeastern U.S.
But my aging Honda CRV had other plans. Broken brake pads forced me to stay a night in small town Georgia, and delayed my trip from the infernal summer heat of Atlanta to the slightly milder temps of the Asheville area.
And I nearly decided to go elsewhere. But after schlepping my mountain bike so many miles to get here, I wasn’t going to give up so easily. And I knew from talking to locals that DuPont State Forest handles rain better than many mountain bike trails, which can sometimes be damaged by rainy-day rides. So instead of giving up, I simply put on a pair of Chaco sandals, strapped on my mostly water-resistant canvas backpack, acknowledged that I had, indeed, forgotten my rain jacket again, and started biking down DuPont State Park’s 5-star mountain bike trails in the pouring rain and thunder.
Four hours later, I decided it was the best outdoor adventure I’ve had in months. Cool and energized, with a superb bike trail all to myself, I slipped into a joyous moment of the kind that many of us are constantly chasing in the outdoors, but rarely find. The pouring rain was my soundtrack, and the stream crossings felt epic, despite how relatively easy they were.
When you’re moving and enjoying yourself, it’s easy to forget that you’re soaking wet, especially since the alternative is feeling equally damp with sweat and exhausted from the beating sun.
I eventually arrived at Bridal Veil Falls, one of the park’s several iconic waterfalls. I had the place to myself. It wasn’t even raining at that point. I’d simply ventured into the park when most hikers and bikers decided to escape. So I hiked up the side of the lower falls to reach an upper area with another waterfall, bathed myself in the cascading water, and felt tears on my face from the nameless catharsis of simply feeling alive again.
It was a perfect moment — and I almost missed it by assuming that a rainstorm was a non-starter.
Caveats and Loopholes
This is when you tell me that it was a bad idea.
The risks! The selfishness! The lack of personal responsibility! The poor example for others!
To which I say: Hold your horses, muchacho.
I’m not saying go climb a Colorado 14er in a lightning storm. That would be a bad idea and could have tragic results. But therein lies one of the problems with the American attitude toward risk: conflating the worst-case scenario with all the others.
Fears about the rain typically fall into two categories: death from lightning/floods or death from the cold. The latter scenario is the more likely one. It’s also only a viable threat if you’re far from civilization on a hiking or backpacking trip. If that’s the case, then you should already be prepared with extra clothes, a rain jacket, or base layers like merino wool that maintain your body temperature even when wet.
Even in a thunderstorm, I felt safe biking in a dense forest, and that’s because there’s nearly no chance of being struck by lightning. Moreover, DuPont State Park is a solid place to hike or mountain bike — even in heavy rain. The trails are built to drain off water, and DuPont is basically a rainforest, so it can handle lots of moisture. Other mountain bike trails are different. They might not hold up as well, or they might get damaged from riding in the rain.
In truth, there could be a million reasons not to go adventuring in the rain. But the same goes for heat, which is more dangerous, yet often wrongly perceived as less of a risk.
Just look at the numbers: In the U.S., 20-30 people die each year from lightning. Another 100 or so die each year from flash flooding. Yet roughly 700 people die each year in the U.S. from heat-related causes. And those numbers are rising fast. Recent data even suggests a new normal: Every year since 2020 has seen more than a thousand Americans die from heat-related causes. That peaked with 2,325 deaths in 2023 — the most recent year with available data.
If the weather suddenly turns, we should be more wary of the sun than the rain cloud.
‘The Coolest Year of Our Lives’
My experience in North Carolina is one that I’ve relived repeatedly, especially in the last few months. I’ll have plans to get outside, then realize it’s already raining or about to start. And I’ll have to pause and ask myself, “Is this really that big a deal? Why not just try it and see?”
Every single time, I’ve decided to try it and see. And every time, I’ve had no regrets about getting outside. In most instances, I had a fantastic day and felt better for my time outside the house.
If I get soaking wet, well, I come home and change clothes. More often than not, I have spare clothes and a towel in the car, so I can get dry and start freshening up even before getting home.
And while I might be in the minority of rain lovers, I’m far from the only one. There’s no park I visit more frequently than Stone Mountain, since I live a short drive away. This popular hike often has hundreds of people on it. When it rains, I often linger for a while on the wide granite summit, enjoying a vast 360-degree view of Central Georgia as the rain clouds darken and start pouring down. I see many others do the same thing, sitting beneath stands of trees as the thunder-and-lightning show begins.
After an afternoon hike in the 90s or even triple digits, the cool rain can feel like a revelation — a game of tension and relief that makes even short outings a magical reminder of the power of nature, and our small place within it.
I recently heard a climate change activist say that every year is now the “coolest year of our lives.” As heat records continue to be broken, the new normal of intense heat has become clear. But we humans change even more slowly than the climate, it seems. We still often fear the rain. And I can hardly blame anyone for feeling that way. Rain clouds have long been the preferred metaphor for evil tidings, portentous events, or deep depression.
For myself, gathering rainclouds started to represent something else entirely: a signal to get outside and have an adventure.
