Thursday, November 15, 2012

Sandboarding in CO















 
"Uh, guys....I think these dunes are a lot bigger than what we were expecting" I said while we were staring of the back porch of the visitor's center. The dunes were absolutely massive - 750 ft tall at their highest. Years of erosion on a mountain range caused these dunes to form at the base a neighboring mountain. So after hiking in about a quarter of a mile to the base, we settled on a small "bunny hill" to see how much raw talent we had. Turns out the sand was much too soft in most places to get any sort of speed up, but soon we found our ideal dune - hard packed, steep, and tall. Perfect. We used the puck of wax to get the boards as slick as possible and then hopped on. The sleds and board were much much faster. After figuring out a strange way to sit on the sleds, we were able to squeeze approx 30mph down the tallest part of the dune. While that may sound like a crawl in your car, I promise skimming along with your butt half an inch from the sand will give you a new perspective. I will be the first to admit that the sandboard was not my cup of tea. I have never been snowboarding or wake boarding and never was really that awesome on a skateboard. With some more practice, I think I could get better on the board and may enjoy snowboarding (thats really the last thing I need, another expensive hobby).  It was a great day, something few people have done in my area, and we were all plenty tired after climbing up the dunes for 4 hours at 6,000ft.

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