SAND BOARDING IN DEATH VALLEY

Yesterday my Irish friend Diarmuid and I decided to set of on an adventure. Snubbing the little tour agencies offering trips to Death Valley in the comfort of an air-conditioned four wheel drive van, we choose to take on the desert ourselves. We rented a couple of front suspension mountain bikes, a sand board and loaded up on water and off we went.It took us about two hours to cycle out to the aptly named Death Valley. And I have never ever been so thirsty. Even stopping every fifteen minutes for a few gulps of quickly warming water our throats were parched. It was so, so very dry. Like nothing I’ve felt before. When we finally arrived at our location, exhausted and saturated in sweat, we choose to put ourselves through even more abuse and hurl ourselves down a big sand dune on a sand board (AKA an old snowboard).
This was both of our first time trying this sport. And with my snowboard experience we, once again, snubbed the tour agencies offering lessons and a comfortable ride out to Death Valley.I’d seen sand boarding on TV before and always thought it to be stupid. It just looked like snowboarding, but with much more work and pain involved for a fraction of the fun and speed. My initial run proved my theory to be pretty spot on. Spitting sand out of mouth I questioned how the hell this could be fun to anyone. And then hiking all the way back up to the top of the dune (at 2500M altitude) I really questioned the sanity of any idiot foolish enough to do this regularly.But of course the backpacker in me was adamant to get my moneys worth from the board rental so we stuck at it for a few more runs. We both got a lot better after a few goes, but falling off on each and every run really did nothing for my personal well being. There were a couple of local lads there too who obviously go regularly. They shouted support (between bouts of laughing) and gave us some tips. But to be honest, even they didn’t look so great, there’s not much carving or jumping and all the runs are really short. So for the time being, I think I’ll stick to the snow.

The action shots.