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COVID19 Compliant - Morning Fewbie Desert Drive - Al Aweer to Mahafiz: Ridge Riding Feast - Dubai/Sharjah - 18 Jun 2021


Ale Vallecchi

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9 hours ago, Ale Vallecchi said:

Al Aweer to Mahafiz (and on to Nazwa): Ridge Riding Feast - Drive Report

"You are not meant for crawling. So don't. You have wings. Learn to use them and drive." - Rumi

One of the most difficult things to get used to in desert off-roading is climbing the side slope of a dune, reaching the ridge, managing to get 2 wheels on the other side of the ridge, and... drive on it (before, eventually descending on either side). That moment, between when the sky is almost all you see and the car settles on the ridge, is almost like learning to fly. Daring to leave your comfort zone, and willingly launch yourself on a path which requires trials and errors, persistence and patience, and eventually will make you, literally, fly on top of the dunes. 

As true flight, there are many ways to fly on a dune's ridge. Like flying, sometimes it requires the power of one's wings (read engine), and others just to tweak them in one direction or another, exploiting the momentum that has carried you up, and controlling it. This ridge-riding feast aimed to build  in each driver the awareness that riding ridges requires a delicate balance of power and control, that it can be achieved by alternating burst of speed (climbing and occasionally overcoming the drag of the sand underneath the car) with delicate touches of the wheel (to navigate the ridges curves, without losing control or momentum).

Whether the drive delivered its promise, only the drivers can tell. I know for sure that we rode as many ridges as we could find, which is pretty much everywhere in this area, except close to the crossing of the tarmac coming from Al Aweer, and just prior to reaching the Mahafiz area, where the dunes become shorter and tighter, requiring more technical, finesse, driving. In all, from the drive's recorded track, I could count 45 ridges ridden, which should surely count as a good number of repetitions of this same exercise.

The drive was well managed by all members, without major issues (stucks and refusals are supposed to happen in these kinds of drives, as are part of the learning process). Great Second Lead by@Alain Canivet-Abikhalil, extremely reliable support at the Center by a tireless @Nivin, and perfect, hard worked Sweep by @Darren Brooke. Very good performance by @Anoop Nair (you got more confident as the drive progressed), @Warren Flay (always very reliable), @Tareck (not easy to handle your big car on this terrain), @Hardik Mody@Richard Franks, @Adhir Saxena and @Chinthaka Ruwan, all completing a very strong drive.

We finally extended the itinerary to exit at Nazwa (coming back from the outskirts of Mahafiz, which we reached in very good time), and actually this extension, with mostly criss-crossing exercises rather than ridge-riding, was were fatigue and heat started to create new challenges, and made the drive more eventful.

We exited after a total of 4:07 hours, of which a long 3:26 while driving (with really minimal breaks), covering 81.7 Km, at a brisk average moving pace of 24 Km/h

Thanks a lot to everyone for joining, and hope to see you soon. Have a great weekend.

 

 

Thanks @Ale Vallecchifor the report and for all the encouragement and directions given during the drive. It was my first experience riding the ridges which I enjoyed a great deal and has built up some level of confidence towards the end of the drive.

Thanks everyone for the commitment and patience shown..

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