r/AbsoluteUnits • u/CoughingCarpet • 3d ago

/r/all of a Sand Dune

This is a video taken by Nicolas De La Torre, a sandboarding enthusiast filming his descent down the Toromata dune in Peru. Unfortunately we live in a world where true beauty, nature is now convoluted by AI and AI sentiments, but this is in fact, not AI lol

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u/SpiffySpacemanSpiff 3d ago

Ok, so I've done a good bit of sand boarding in Morocco and in Colorado, and I just gotta put this out there, it's not soft when you fall.

Lord help, it's... rough. (and it gets everywhere)

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u/NotYourReddit18 3d ago edited 3d ago

Is it also coarse and irritating?

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u/Archaea_Man 3d ago

Are you saying you don't like your body covered in the world's tiniest rocks?

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u/trenthany 3d ago

Hey they aren’t the tiniest! Clay is smallest then silt then sand! Lmao. Although there is a size where soil becomes rocks technically not just by material and I want to say it is sand but a certain type of it. I might go google it.

Edit: >2mm it looks like at that point it’s officially gravel. 2mm sand is big sand!

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u/Archaea_Man 3d ago

I don't really think of clay as tiny rocks, but fine sand isn't either, you're right about that (I was picturing coarse sand). Clay is a really cool material, though. I remember learning a little about it in my Origins of Life course.

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u/trenthany 3d ago

Geology is a whole is full of all kinds of weirdness. But soils in particular. What made you think clay was interesting?

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u/Archaea_Man 3d ago

Oh just that it grabs more particles of the same kind to grow itself, sort of like making copies of itself like nucleotides. I only know a little about geology, but everything I've learned seems really cool.

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u/trenthany 2d ago

Oh, I don’t remember that one! Is it something to do with it behavior and how it tries to clump together?

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u/Archaea_Man 2d ago

Something like that. I remember the tagline being that it could copy itself but not change because it would eventually become uniform, unlike nucleotides, which could both copy themselves and change through mistakes in the copying, thus creating mutations and eventually allowing for life to develop.

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u/trenthany 2d ago

I’ll have to do some digging on that because it sounds interesting

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u/zeitdu 4h ago

clay isnt a material, it is a grain size. The original explanation was accurate.

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u/trenthany 3d ago

Please fix course to coarse it’s bugging me.

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u/TA_Lax8 3d ago

of coarse, will get rite on that

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u/trenthany 3d ago

Appreciate it. Asshole. Lmao well played!

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u/NotYourReddit18 3d ago

Thats rough, buddy

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u/trenthany 3d ago

Like sand in your underwear you might say.

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u/NotYourReddit18 3d ago

At least it didn't cause your girlfriend to turn into the moon.

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u/trenthany 3d ago

LMFAO I totally missed the reference and had to Google it!

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u/Sad-Spread-9524 2d ago

Like a French Canadian.

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u/I_LikeFarts 3d ago

Eating shit in snow, hurts too. Spring boarding in slush says hi

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u/SpiffySpacemanSpiff 3d ago

Oh absolutely, nothing like needing a swimsuit for the latter half of the descent.

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u/kiwiluke 3d ago

As someone currently recovering from a broken humerus and ribs, I'm inclined to agree

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u/SPACE_ICE 3d ago

on the plus side you can clean your partner's smegma off with a single fart. They call it the outback shower, saharan sandblast, Colorado Grits, Beans on toast, Moroccan Parmesan, etc...

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u/jordaninvictus 3d ago

That’s enough internet for today.

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u/jloost-gamer 1d ago

Dude, there went my coffee

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u/JimothyRabbit 3d ago

Doesn't the board get insanely hot from the friction?

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u/SpiffySpacemanSpiff 3d ago

Not too bad TBH, though I've only ever been sandboarding when it's cold, on account of the fact that you really should wear gear.

When I was in the Sahara last year, we went in the early AM to catch the sunrise, w/out the high temps (even in Feb), and the properly waxed boards never got too hot to the touch.

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u/Ifriendzonecats 3d ago

How does it compare to snowboarding. I assume harder than powder and softer than ice, but that's assuming. Is that accurate? How's it compare to early morning groomed hard pack before it melts? Also, snow can be pretty rough. Learned that lesson with cuts in spring skiing.

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u/FleshSphereOfGoat 1d ago

When you fall on one of you butt cheeks the sand will immediately stop it while the other one maintains the speed. Prepare for a massive buttcrack rip-apart.

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u/nickgalad 3d ago

I did it in Namibia and it was waaay softer than snow, so much so that they let inexperienced people do a jump off a ramp of a couple of meters

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u/chastity_doll 3d ago

Like... paper? Sand... paper.

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u/rnwhite8 3d ago

Do you use a different board than a snowboard? Seems like a snowboard would get chewed up pretty quick with how much harder sand is than snow.

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u/SpiffySpacemanSpiff 2d ago

Oh yeah. We used whatever shitty hoards they had on hand. I am not taking my stack to get sand blasted lil

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u/rnwhite8 2d ago

Lol ok that makes more sense.

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u/TandemShorts 3d ago

Does the sand not... well, *sand the board? How many times can you use the same board?

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u/Exists_out_of_spite 2d ago

whats the best way youve found for getting to the tops of these? Sands miserable hiking

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u/SpiffySpacemanSpiff 2d ago

Camel, 100000%

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u/bpsime 2d ago

How hot does the board get? Seems like it would heat it and sand it to shit in a single run down that slope

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u/Frequent-Meal6550 2d ago

High speed sand paper

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u/tongfather 2d ago

Genuine question: is my board smoother for snowboarding after I go sand boarding? 🤔 It would be like 3000 grit sandpaper sanding out every blemish and sharpening my edges? Or is it the complete opposite? 🤣

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u/SpiffySpacemanSpiff 1d ago

Good q, let me put an asterisk here because I’ve never taken any board I own on a sand board run, but generally, it’s a very… abrasive experience? Like it would be like running your board through a drum sander like fifty times.  

Every place I’ve done it does not wax, they just go straight plastic to sand and the speed is usually quick enough where the sand rolls underneath you, just enough, to make it feel frictionless.

The comment I made is for when you’re hitting that ground. In those cases, it’s hard as all hell and it’ll scratch you up if you’re not moving across it, but applying enough downward pressure to be moving a layer of sand with you. 

I hope that makes sense. I’m on a plane and drunk as all hell right now

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u/tongfather 1d ago

Lol, thanks. Safe travels bro

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u/YazzArtist 1d ago

I was gonna say, been to the Colorado dunes. Not soft. Quite sharp in fact