RE: driving sand dunes, plus hot weather (longish)

From: Russ Borman (xjruss@iwon.com)
Date: Mon Jun 18 2001 - 16:03:26 EDT


I drive my truck in the dunes quite often during the desert season. Mine
is a '99 4x4, stock tires and suspension. It does extremely well. If you
have some other vehicles with you it's not too hard to navigate your way
through the big dunes and avoid the trouble spots. But like you said, the
bowls and steeper hills are best left to the bikes and buggies. I go to
the Imperial Sand Dunes in SoCal. I also make an occasional trip up to
the Oregon Sand Dunes which are much more friendly to 4x4s.

Here's a related story. On a trip out to Gordons Well (opposite end of
Glamis) this past season, one of our riding buddies rolled his buggy pretty
bad and couldn't get it running. So my brother and I rode back to camp
and nobody was around so all we had was his truck (he drove this trip).
 So he let me drive his 2001 Ram 2500 4x4 Quad Cab short bed High Output
Cummins Diesel with the 6-speed manual (What a sweet truck!!) into the dunes
because he felt he lacked the experience to pull it off. Anyway, off we
went and the truck was awesome, even with the stock Michelin M/S tires,
it pulled through everything. Now keep in mind that I was very careful
where I went and tried to stay on the level sand as much as possible because
we were driving alone. We finally found our friends and hooked up the buggy
behind the truck. The front tires on the buggy were bent sideways so it
was just dragging behind the truck. We had to stop and unhook the buggy
a couple of times so I could back the truck out after losing traction but
made it back to camp safely and never had to dig out, or push the truck.
 It was quite a feeling of accomplishment for us.

Russ
'99 CC SLT V8 4x4

-- Original Message --

>
>Spent a few hours this past weekend at Pismo Beach,
>officially the Oceano Dunes SVRA, in Southern
>California. Never having driven on sand before I was
>worried about getting stuck as I had no buddy along to
>yank me out.
>
>The truck amazed me. I drove the hard sand to the
>south end of the beach passing a few pickups stuck
>along the way. The only vehicles I saw up high in the
>dunes were bikes and buggies. Figured I wasn't going
>up there with them. Just before I turned around I saw
>a stock full-size pickup come down out of the sand so
>I headed up there. Over the next couple of hours I got
>farther and farther into the dunes. Eventually I drove
>up to the top of the highest one I could find. I did
>avoid the bowls and steepest slopes. But I never had
>any traction problems at all.
>
>This is in a stock 2000 Club Cab 4x4 with a full-time
>transfer case, limited slip, and 31-inch Wranglers. I
>never even locked in the center diff.
>
>I'm interested in hearing about any other experiences
>with our trucks on sand dunes.
>

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