Ryebrye
08-03-2010, 08:19 PM
We were on our way to do The Squeeze Saturday Morning, but the weather wasn't looking favorable. Although the forecast only called for afternoon thunderstorms with a slight chance of morning thunderstorms, the sky we saw told a different story.
From the base of Moroni Slopes this is what it looked like:
http://images.ryebrye.com.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/08/MoroniSlopesPreview.png
Well... actually, that's a browser window - but if you want to see what it looked like check out this link:
http://www.ryebrye.com/blog/2010/08/03/storms-over-the-swell-panorama-from-base-of-moroni-slopes/
and click on one of the 3 different resolutions of the panorama viewer. (I recommend high resolution. It will still load pretty fast - you can zoom in and out of them with the little controls)
Over the top of moroni slopes some clouds were already forming, and you can clearly see rain already falling from a storm in the east. This image was taken around 7AM (if I remember correctly).
I've done the Squeeze before and from the top of Moroni slopes surveyed the sky and not seen a single cloud in the sky in any direction only to have it start raining on me halfway through the canyon - so seeing the clouds already formed up and moving around made us change our plans and go with one of our backup plans. We ended up going to Goblin Valley (we camped on the Goblin Valley side off of the Wild Horse Mesa loop road, in part so Goblin Valley could be a backup plan, along with some other things on that side of the swell.)
So we went to Goblin Valley and played around for a while. The storm clouds in the general direction of The Squeeze continued to get larger and it looks like it dumped quite a bit of rain over that area - maybe not enough to flash, but I'm rather glad I wasn't in the canyon to find out.
We were able to head over to Zero G and do that canyon in the early afternoon. Its a lot easier to observe the sky and carve out a two to three hour window where you feel confident you will be safe than a 6 to 8 or so hour window :) Especially given how fast those storms move around down there.
I also took a panorama of Goblin Valley, it's linked to from that other link - but that ones more for the "dark room" forum than the canyoneering forum :)
From the base of Moroni Slopes this is what it looked like:
http://images.ryebrye.com.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/08/MoroniSlopesPreview.png
Well... actually, that's a browser window - but if you want to see what it looked like check out this link:
http://www.ryebrye.com/blog/2010/08/03/storms-over-the-swell-panorama-from-base-of-moroni-slopes/
and click on one of the 3 different resolutions of the panorama viewer. (I recommend high resolution. It will still load pretty fast - you can zoom in and out of them with the little controls)
Over the top of moroni slopes some clouds were already forming, and you can clearly see rain already falling from a storm in the east. This image was taken around 7AM (if I remember correctly).
I've done the Squeeze before and from the top of Moroni slopes surveyed the sky and not seen a single cloud in the sky in any direction only to have it start raining on me halfway through the canyon - so seeing the clouds already formed up and moving around made us change our plans and go with one of our backup plans. We ended up going to Goblin Valley (we camped on the Goblin Valley side off of the Wild Horse Mesa loop road, in part so Goblin Valley could be a backup plan, along with some other things on that side of the swell.)
So we went to Goblin Valley and played around for a while. The storm clouds in the general direction of The Squeeze continued to get larger and it looks like it dumped quite a bit of rain over that area - maybe not enough to flash, but I'm rather glad I wasn't in the canyon to find out.
We were able to head over to Zero G and do that canyon in the early afternoon. Its a lot easier to observe the sky and carve out a two to three hour window where you feel confident you will be safe than a 6 to 8 or so hour window :) Especially given how fast those storms move around down there.
I also took a panorama of Goblin Valley, it's linked to from that other link - but that ones more for the "dark room" forum than the canyoneering forum :)