The Banshee Cry

.
(Part 2 of a 4-part saga about my September 1981 ADK trip.)
.
While bivouacking close to the summit of Mt. Algonquin, and after falling asleep to a beautifully calm midnight view of clear silver moonlight, I woke up at 3am to an entirely different world, one of chaos, loud blasting wind, and shards of torn cloud pin-wheeling past my face. The moon, now in the SW, was barely visible behind racing cloud formations.
.
Then I started to hear an absolutely unearthly sound, and it got steadily louder. It was unbelievably frightening, and I do not frighten that easily. It gives me chills as I recount it now, decades later. It was an earsplitting sound like a ghastly scream. All I could think of was legends of the “Cry of the Banshee.” It was blood-curdling and insanely loud. I was terrified. I could not explain it. In all my experiences, no natural forces could ever produce a sound like this.
.
I am not a superstitious person, but my emotional experience at that moment was as if there were, in actual reality, a raging supernatural demon out there, the kind of demon-greeter one could imagine meeting at the very Gates of Hell. I consulted my rational mind and easily agreed with it that only natural forces operate in the universe. But what the hell was making this ghastly noise? I could not even begin to rationally explain it.
.
Thinking that I absolutely must explore this weird phenomenon, I got out of my bivy gear and put my boots on. The screaming sound was coming from the summit, 40 yards away and a bit higher up to the NW of my bivy site. I put rocks on my gear so it would not blow away, and I started climbing toward the summit and the noise’s source. All the hairs on my body were actually bristling with fear, but I just had to check it out.
.
Moving toward the summit rocks, a gust of wind blew me off my feet. I got up and moved onward, crouching low, and the terrifying screaming sound just got louder. The final few yards were the scariest, as I was about to peek over the summit rocks.
.
Finally reaching the summit on all fours, facing into the full force of the wind, I looked over the far side of the mountain. Between me and the valley of the Olympic town of Lake Placid to the NW was a huge storm cloud. Its base was far below me and its top was far higher than the entire mountain range. And it was advancing straight toward me – fast.
.
“Oh,” I thought, “it’s just a storm.” (Albeit a really horrendous and scary storm.) That completely explained the unearthly screaming sound. It had simply been powerful wind racing over the summit rocks upwind of me. All clarified, I quickly headed back to my bivy site. This was a hell of a storm.
.
Back to my bivouac, I got out the only lightweight shelter I had packed, a one-pound Gore-Tex bivy sack. I got it over my half-bag and parka, but before zipping it closed I put all my other gear, including boots, into my pack and put heavy rocks on top of it all so it would not blow away. Zipped inside my bivy, I waited it out.
.
Wind gusts were so sudden and violent that they actually rocked me with each gust as I lay there, almost rolling me off the ledge -- and I was on the lee side of the summit. I could not sleep, and the storm just got worse, accompanied by more loud ghostly sounds.
.
Finally morning light came as the storm blew over. I felt quite beat. After all, I did not sleep much, and the fear in the night had exhausted me. It had become very cold and wet, and I knew I would not try climbing the smooth friction slab of Mt. Colden today in wet conditions, so I declared this a rest day.
.
(This saga continues in Parts 3 and 4.)
.
-Zenwind.