sand chick

We'll be out Thursday night this year. We really need to work on a raffle or something for next year.

Haha! Great write up! I still remember using photo's on a lap top and looking at the background scenery to find the location of the South Pole! I wish the military mail box was still maintained! I thought that was a great idea! Love the new South Pole! Great job Regulators!

Old Glory

That's Dune Mart and they are right next to us, GTP Off Road on Vendor Row.

Haha, it's kind of impossible to map out an epic Joe Duner run, as we start out on the right side of comp in the big dunes, and hit just about every single dune going to the North Pole. He just reads the dunes like no one else I know. Very technical, tight corners, sweeping banks, perfect lines, jumps, transitions and wheelie spots. We'll be vending for Prez weekend, or I would say sure meet us up, but since we won't be camping/riding, it would be hard to know when he's heading out for a ride. Maybe clean up weekend, if he doesn't do the HUGE Boys Trip at Dumont the weekend before clean up.

Direct with a satellite

We'll be at Vendor Row.

Trying to talk Mike into a sneak out weekend for our anniversary, like the old days!

We've been duning every other weekend.. and back to back Christmas and New Year's... This 3 weeks until Prez weekend is going to SUCK ASS! And then Prez weekend is a vending weekend!

Don't forget that the BLM meeting is on Saturday, in the BLM area at Dumont, right after the clean up! Come out and give a voice to your concerns! They are YOUR dunes!

Great report! I had hoped the dunes would have been back to normal for you guys! Looks like a great empty weekend! Those are the best! Solo rides around Dumont are awesome! Those are my favorite!

Yeah, it's a wet dunes year

Testing the performance of the new Can AM X3

Some of our group arrived Thursday to a rainy drizzle, that continued on through out the day on Friday, keeping them tucked away in their hauler's all day Friday. When we arrived Friday night, the rain had stopped and the clouds had parted and the stars were shining. The ground in camp was soaked and saturated, the air was crisp. Everyone had stayed inside, so there was no fire lit to warm up by, so as soon as we unloaded and dropped seats, everyone hung out in our hauler, now dubbed the "party hall" since we have enough seating for a small party. We had refreshments and chatted about the upcoming Glamis trip, how bad the weather had been and how hopeful we were about the dunes drying out. Finally it was time for everyone to retreat to their own haulers and us to finally complete setting up before going to bed. Mike and I woke before the sunrise. The dog pack in now on an early morning schedule and we were also excited for a breakfast run! We had our coffee and breakfast at 6:30 AM! Out with the dog pack for morning duties, we got a couple great shots of the sunrise over the dunes. The almost full moon was still lit up in the predawn sky The rest of the group heard us up and out and about after breakfast, so they all creeped out of their hauler's to talk about the breakfast ride. We had a "Mickey Mouse" camp. With the main camp and two sets of "ears" One ear from Vegas and one ear from Cedar City. not sure why we all didn't just make one group? I wish now I had taken a photo of the Mickey Mouse head from the top of the dune. Everyone was ready to go in minutes and off we went with Adam leading the pack. We started out in the big dunes behind comp and started making our way towards comp, when one of the group from Cedar City had overloaded their 4 seat RZR with too many dudes! And came down hard on a transition and bent the out of their radius rod, trailing arm and broke their shock. The dunes were hard as a rock and saturated wet. Anytime someone crested and got on it, it was like wet mud hitting you in the face. There was just no give, so the poor over loaded RZR said, I'm done! While the broken RZR was being pulled to a flat area, the group decided to hit up the small jump by where the RZR broke. Once the RZR was at the flat area, the group all took off to get a rescue truck, before duning back to the scene of the crime. Once the broken RZR was loaded on the trailer, the group took off sliding through the wet dunes, we cruised by Banshee Wars, but had no time to stop. We cruised on to a stop at the North Pole for a quick minute, until everyone else said they were hungry fro breakfast. Mike and I had already eaten, so we were good, but we cruised on back with the group, hitting up most of the dunes on our way back to camp. Our group was huge! The rest of the day continued on like that, eat, ride, eat ride, ride, ride.... Cocktail ride... eat. On the sunset stop on the Cocktail Run, some rails where shredding up the bowl below us, so I just had to get a couple shots... The crowd was light, but everyone came to dune and the sand was pretty tracked out by the end of Saturday! Back at camp, we had a nice fire and campfire conversations. Our group seemed to be early beds early risers, so it was an early night again, and we were in bed around 11:00 PM. The next morning, most of the group was heading home. Since they were part of our Utah Crew and had long drives ahead of them. It's great having a Utah Crew, we all dune together all year long, during our dune season, they come see us at Dumont and during Dumont's off season, we head north to dune and trail with them at Coral Pink, Little Sahara and Duck Creek. A couple of them are even going to hit up Glamis with us in a week and a half! Now THAT'S some dune dedication! The Utah crew and Adam took off for a fast breakfast run before they had to leave. We where planning on a different run, long, fast and swooping. I wanted to find some places to get some action shots, so we were on a mission. The sand was starting to dry out and the dune run, was a catch and drift, catch and drift mix of wet dry. The stuff on top or in direct sun was dry, but had wet underneath and the shaded areas were still pretty wet. We found a couple spots to get some jumps and wheelies. Mike was having a blast testing out his new Can Am Maverick X3! This was the first trip with it. While we were playing, we had a random X3 join in the fun! Love having people just join in. Later the next day, these same guys were sitting on the top of the biggest spot at Dumont, when we cruised by them on an epic Joe Duner run, and I waved them to join in and they hopped in line with us and had a blast. When we stopped, they were excited and had not run the dunes like that before. They hung out for a little bit, before heading out on their own. We headed back to camp just in time to say good bye to the Utah Crew. We hung out in camp for a bit, before going on an epic Joe Duner run. This is the run from earlier that the random guys joined in. During that stop, Adam took some time to play with his new X3, he had his out over New Years, but Mike's didn't arrive in time for that trip. Adam was having fun testing the performance and capabilities of his machine. Once we were done taking a break, we headed back over to Talladega for some more play time. It made for a much better dune run breaks then just sitting at the North Pole. We didn't even see the pole at all on Sunday. I was ok with that. And the guys had so much fun ripping up the sand and having play time. We all chilled in camp until the next run and it was more of repeats from the day before, ride, eat, repeat... It was another early night on Sunday, we were all tired from a busy day of shredding sand. The group slept in a little, I don't know about them, but I was woken at around 11:30 PM to the winds howling. I was woken again at 3:30 AM to a still howling wind. And the sand was just a mess the next day. All the wind had blown the dry soft sand off the tops of the dunes and throughout, leaving big clumps of wet concrete like sand exposed. It made transitions difficult because of the ruts and ditches all over the tops of the dunes, we hung low and still had as much fun as possible. But it made it easy to head back to camp and back up.... And we had the 2nd Annual GTP Off Road Glamis Invasion to look forward to in only a week and a half! What a great fun weekend in the sand box! With a ton of ride time in. Mike is loving the X3!

Yeah it did! What a mess!

Yeah it's SOAKED out here!

I give the road a freakin capital D... There's at least 2 feet of gravel on the sides and it's a pot hole washboard mess!

Nice... Looking at the dunes in the background, they look fairly clean and some untouched, that wind tomorrow should cover those up for this weekend! Oh was I supposed to look at the trucks and not the sand?