Congrats on making your first trip to Glamis! Now that you have unloaded, set up camp, gassed up, and ready to ride where should you go first? Hopefully you are camping with friends that have previous experience in the dunes that you can follow and learn. If you are solo we can give you some easy pointers to get out and back.
Start slow and learn quickly
Riding through the desert in any vehicle is exhilarating. But to increase speed you must learn how to read the terrain. 1st simple rule to follow is Never go straight over a dune unless you are 100% positive what is on the back side. You always want to crest the top of the hill by turning right or left at the top never going straight over. once you have crested the dune look straight ahead and to the sides to asses the backside of the dune. When you have scanned the terrain now make a decision to continue straight or to turn down the dune moving towards the next dune. A simple way to think of it is that you never out drive your vision. I see so many people think the dune continues to roll over like the side you drove up and it drops 8 ft to the bottom or it turns into a witches eye, typically ending someones weekend with catastrophic failure of the machine or worse. We have a post here that will help explain what to watch out and look for.
Camping next to the store a great little place is the small dunes just west of you. These little dunes will give you an understanding of how to turn and snake your way through sand dunes. These little dunes are a sample of the bigger dunes to the west. The main problem with these little dunes is that they are very choppy and hard to find a good smooth line through them. That being said the choppy dunes allows the time at a slower speed to crest going left or right and then asses if you drop down take a line to the other crest in front of you. Another idea is to head out follow HWY 78 west cross over the entrance to the flats and continue west on sand highway. After about a 1/4 mile you will see a fork, as you reach the trees/bushes, that will head to the left or continue straight parrallel to the highway. This fork to the left you can follow and it becomes the entrance to Oldsmobile hill. Follow this path through all the whoops till you see the hill on the right. Congrats you have made it to Oldsmobile Hill.
Another option is to follow Sand Highway parallel to HWY 78 crossing over Osbourne lookout road just west of Competition hill. When you are cruising along side of the highway and then the road dips down about a hundred feet and then you see a hill back up to highway. If you see the small area to the left that is referred to as competition hill. Not much to look at anymore but you may have heard of it from the glory days back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. The Sand Highway will run for about 5miles till you run into Gecko rd and the ranger station. As you travel along if you look to the south you will see all the sand dunes that you can play in. Once you hit Gecko Rd you can turn around and head back to camp or you can head south and follow Gecko Rd until you reach Roadrunner loop to understand all the camping options in Glamis. If you travel further south from Roadrunner this will take you down to Gordons Well and the restaurant Duners Diner about 20mi south right up against the 8 freeway.
Easy tips to know where you are
Traveling through the dunes it is always recommended to travel with somebody or a group. It is never recommended to travel alone through the dunes. If something was to happen finding you could be a real problem. Traveling with a group or somebody else if you get separated the biggest tip that will help everyone is get to the tallest dune close by. Do not keep driving aimlessly trying to find your way, get to the top of a tall dune and wait. It is easier to see where you are and more importantly for others to see you. If you have broken the most important unwritten rule in the dunes and have traveled solo and need to get back to camp have piece of mind that you have borders on 3 sides that you can use to guide you back. Highway 78 to the north, the train tracks to the east, and Gecko Rd/ Canal to the West. Further off in the distance you have the Chocolate Mountains to the north east further off is the Black Mountains to the south East and then across the valley far off to the west is the Laguna mountains. Along with the sun always being to the south during the winter you can always have a sense of direction. While driving in the dunes constantly scan the dunes when on crest of the dunes. By constantly doing this you can scan the horizon to locate the landmarks to help keep your bearings and direction. If you are on the east side of the dunes you will be able to see the store tower that can guide you back to the store. North side of the dunes you may be able to see highway 78, travel north till you hit sand highway, and then head right (East) to the store or left (West) to Gecko rd. The problem with cruising through the dunes many times the smoothest line is a series of lefts and rights. This has almost a washer effect where you feel like you are getting spun around in circles. This pattern can lead to progress moving forward. Image a side winder traveling through the dunes they do not leave a straight line it is a series of lines that move perpendicular to line of travel.
As you get away from camp and get into the middle of the sand dunes you will find that the hills get bigger, steeper, softer, and longer. Your speed through the bigger dunes will need to be faster and reaction time quicker to safely maneuver through. This is where the Fun really begins. for those of you that will use a phone for GPS help will mostly have coverage in dunes, but there are dead spots with no cellular service. A trick is to download google maps offline while you have service at camp. This will allow the Blue GPS dot to continue to move over a map that has been loaded on your phone. Also become familiar with how to send location or a pin to somebody. This may be of help if you breakdown, or get lost. Believe me it happens that people get turned around. Sitting by the fire at night people have rolled up and asked what wash they were in and we were camped on Pad 2.5, the complete opposite side of the dunes from the washes.
Sand Highway Princesses. This defines a lot of people that travel to Glamis. By day they travel the sand highway from camp to oldsmobile then in the afternoon they leave Oldsmobile back to the highway and head west on sand highway to the Drags located by pad 1 on Gecko road. For this group of people there comes some safety in the manner that they know where they are going and not having to worry about driving in the big dunes. This is like going to amusement park paying admission and then only riding the kids rides. Sure it could be fun but you traveled all this way to ride the big roller coasters. Some thing that is going to get the adrenaline flowing.
