Something I'll be changing is rethinking one of my vantage points, and realizing its full potential of danger. On Sept 3 2007 I did something really stupid. I got caught up on the Promontory, the cliff edge summit of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona, during the 2nd most violent lightning storm I have experienced in my 10 years of chasing (Plains included). I pushed my luck way past the point of (box of hammers) on that chase and escaped with my skin pretty much due to nature's mercy. It's hard to describe in words. I had no business being up there. No radar access up there, but I did see the loop later. My storm was a round burgundy Pepperoni slice right over the edge of the Mogollon Rim's Promontory. Inside the storm, there was stuff that humans probably shouldn't be seeing, lightning so close, making a grotesque hiss and exploding like green bombs in my face. Thunder was a deafening drumbeat that would never stop. The whole experience was incredible, but so exhausting, have you ever had so much adrenaline pumping that you get tears in your eyes in kind of a weird way? And you feel like you're way past overdrive? I couldn't believe it...the Rim is capable of such violence, beyond what I had previously seen. Being on the Promontory in an electrical storm of that strength, chasing alone at 3am dealing with the hydroplaning on 8% grades and blinding CG constant afterimages in eyeballs...and there is no refuge anywhere...can't go forward, can't go back, what do you do with it? Next time I will rethink the Promontory bigtime if I see certain conditions setting up. I have been rewarded up there, with lightning pictures under full moon and aspen trees. Yes there is lightning, this is Arizona. But in the future I will handle the Promontory with extra kid gloves. Wow.
