UTAH COUNTY, Utah — It started simply enough when a group of friends at the University of Utah decided to go on an early morning hike up Mount Timpanogos to watch the sunrise.
But when the group reached the summit, the weather turned, and a lightning strike killed one student and sent several others to the hospital.
Among the hikers were Steele Moyer and his childhood friend Cole. Steele's parents, Todd and Mariella Moyer, said the group had checked the weather before setting out.
"There wasn't a presence of a storm, occurring just yet, and it was six in the morning, and the lightning struck at 6:10 a.m. And they had checked the weather, and they had checked the weather, and the weather said just light rain," Todd Moyer said.
When the rain started picking up, Steele's friends went immediately to the nearest shelter, known as the tin shack.
The lightning struck the shack.
Steele called his mother, Mariella, about an hour later.
"He was hysterical, and I only got very brief bits of it from the call, and he said, 'Cole is dead, but I'm alive,'" Mariella Moyer said.
Seconds after lightning struck the shack, Cole was unresponsive. Steele and some of the other friends took turns performing CPR for the next 90 minutes.
"What he and the other kids did up there is, It's amazing, and I can't imagine," Mariella shared. "What he had to go through to, to say goodbye to Cole and leave him up there and I'm so grateful that I still have them."
Eventually, the boys were instructed by first responders to leave Cole at the shack and walk a few miles down the trail to get off the mountain.
Steele was also injured in the strike.
"The left side of his body was having like these involuntary kind of spasms or jerks or motions that he couldn't control," Mariella said.
Close to a week later, Steele had recovered and was given the choice to go home for the semester, but he and others on the hike decided to stay in school.
"Some kids went home, and some kids stayed, and you know, but they're all back to the university and they're all supporting each other," Todd and Mariella said.
Cole was buried in his and Steele's hometown.
CLICK HERE to help Steele and his family deal with the remaining medical bills.
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