{"id":732,"date":"2016-05-15T16:10:17","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T16:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/?p=732"},"modified":"2016-05-24T16:11:03","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T16:11:03","slug":"chris-blog-day-4-de-ja-vu-the-mountains-win-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/2016\/05\/chris-blog-day-4-de-ja-vu-the-mountains-win-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris’ blog: Day 4 – De Ja Vu, the mountains win again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fortunately, I will never know if missing breakfast for a 9am lie in will be a mistake or not. Rather we ventured to the local corner shop called Walmart \u2013 with ham, egg and lettuce rolls to accompany the preventative paracetamol stirring away inside we were on the road to \u2018Pecos\u2019 just an hour North West of Fort Stockton. We were torn between a juicy looking storm in deep SW Texas and a serious of storm on the SE tip of New Mexico \u2013 the former had a restrictive road network that we fell victim to yesterday and the latter didn\u2019t have as promising Dew Points and CAPE.<\/p>\n

We sat and considered options in a \u2018Love\u2019 service station waiting for radar updates. Neither jumped out the screen in Tornado clad clothes but the mountainous region storm in SW Texas had more promising characteristics; moving into air with a higher Dew Points, higher levels of CAPE and the potential to develop into a Severe Thunderstorm. We get into the mountains and flirt with danger as we near the core of the storm to get a better vantage point\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Something<\/a>

Something is brewing in the mountain pot..<\/p><\/div>\n

We saw a white land rover meandering down the side of a mountain and joked about going up. A joke, a seed that came into fruition. Sitting at the bottom looking up at what looked like a sheer cliff from my drivers view I was amazed how calm and collected Andy was and even more amazed at the trust and confidence he had in getting up! With foot on the floor, the grunt of our two wheel car screaming into the Texan plains, we climbed up the gravel and sand path at a slugs pace hoping not to get a sudden bout of traction that would propel us over the 100 foot drop \u2013 seatbelts on. But, when we got to the top we were rewarded with a stunning view stretching over multiple valleys to the next mountain and encapsulating the full structure of two thunderstorms. We met another chaser who had the same ludicrous idea as us to sheer a climb on a dirt track with impeding hail and thunderous rain:\u00a0Mike Olbinski (http:\/\/www.mikeolbinski.com\/).<\/p>\n

\"Off-piste\"<\/a>

The near death ascent..<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Andy<\/a>

Andy overlooking the stunning scenery<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Had<\/a>

Had to look out for these in the Off-Piste..<\/p><\/div>\n

\"View<\/a>

View from the top of the top of the ascent<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Leaving this picturesque scenery we accepted that the lack of civilised roads had most probably defeated us from reaching the base of this storm. We checked the radar for tomorrow and everything points North to the Texas panhandle border with New Mexico and Oklahoma \u2013 a \u2018PDS TOR\u2019 warning, \u2018Potentially Dangerous Storm Tornado\u2019 which is the highest warning before emergency. We decided to eat into the journey via a route that may coincide with the storm in front of us if conditions went our way. We headed south, then east, then north to get around the storm and quickly north of their paths. We avoided a blue\/green wall of hail by the skin of our teeth, took a thorough saturating of precipitation that took the escape to 10mph and gusts of wind that really strained the trusty Dodge\u2019s suspension. We would have done this ten times over for the \u2018PDS TOR\u2019 potential tomorrow..<\/p>\n

Lesson for the day \u2013 learn the lessons from previous days!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fortunately, I will never know if missing breakfast for a 9am lie in will be a mistake or not. Rather we ventured to the local corner shop called Walmart \u2013 with ham, egg and lettuce rolls to accompany the preventative paracetamol stirring away inside we were on the road to \u2018Pecos\u2019 just an hour North […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratch.co.uk\/chase2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}