Granary, Corona & Pleiades

[kugath]

Granary, Corona & Pleiades Trip Report

Made our way down to the Moab area this past week for a few canyons…quite windy in the area to say the least. Ate a lot of sand and enjoyed views of thick clouds of sand blowing about.

Started off with Granary on Thursday…did 9 of the 10 possible rappels…great canyon to practice rappels and releasable anchors. Knee deep water at the Pothole with the tree…avoidable but a nice place to soak on a hot day. The rest of the canyon was completely dry. We were surprised that the oil platform which served as the trailhead is now completely gone…they did a nice job moving dirt around and disguising the fact that it was ever there. Not sure if this is old news at this point but it has happened within the last 2 years when we last visited.

Friday we headed to Corona Arch for a fun little rappel. Been hiking to the Arch for 10 or 11 years and rappelling it since the anchors were first put in…never have I seen so many people in the area. After waiting our turn for 4.5 hours we finally had our chance. While waiting we enjoyed rapping off some fairly new chains placed on the way over to Bow Tie Arch…a 190’ rap.

Decided to escape the windy desert so we headed for the La Sals. The La Sals were equally windy but a little less sandy. We carefully set up camp trying to avoid laying out our sleeping bags under any “widowmakers”…we heard several crashing in the night. A large 18 inch Aspen blocked the road Saturday morning just prior to the Pleiades trailhead. Pleiades was flowing around 3 CFS. There is a large and interesting Ice sculpture after the first rap…more ice in the cave further on down…but clear from there on. After a few laps we headed north escaping the wild winds of Moab!

A few artsy HDR pics from the trip!

sk

[oldno7]

Pleides would be mediocre without ice cold spring flows.....

And very nice TR, thanks for sharing

[Sandstone Addiction]

Excellent TR, sounds like you had a great time. Thanks.

[hikster11]

Great pictures thanks for sharing.

[Dan-wild]

Nice job. I love your pictures!

[Byron]

Excellent! Pictures are indeed artsy.

[restrac2000]

Need to get back over to that classic. Miss my Moab discovery days.

[optikal]

Amazing photos!

What size wetsuits are currently recommended for Pleiades?

[jbick]

Very nice! What program do you use for post-processing? Also, I'm very curious: You said there was a lot of wind and sand, so did you have trouble protecting your lens?

[kugath]

A few weeks back I wore a 5mm wetsuit jacket and a 3 mm farmer john + 4 mm neoprene socks...I was just fine. Others were configured with 2mm Jackets, 2mm Farmers and 2mm socks...they reported being on the cold side. Pleiades is basically draining water that was snow a few hours earlier so the water is always cool...the middle to end of the canyon (last 3 rappels typically) are all in the shade increasing the cool temps.

The photos were post processed with a program called HDR Efex Pro...it can be used stand alone or within Adobe Photoshop. Ideally I would have used a tripod...didn't want to keep the group waiting so all the shots were handheld. Moab and the La Sals were quite windy...but the dust was not a problem in the canyon. Water was however...my camera, a Canon 5D Mk 2 and it's 24-70n lens doesn't fit in a canyon keg so I was just packing it in a dry bag. No real immersion threat in Pleiades but nice to have the dry bag in case of a slip.

sk