Ride Report: St. Anthony Dunes, ID

[monkeyonahill]

Well, I've been in Rexburg for 3 weeks now, and I finally made it out to the dunes! I'm only about 10 miles from them which makes it very convenient. Ok.. So in Moses Lake I'm used to dunes that are just rollers, no steep drops. And I'm also only used to maybe 50-60 feet tall dunes at the biggest. Well.. riding in Moses Lake I haven't been scared of any sand dunes since I first started riding. But when I was driving to the dunes and saw them off in the distance.. It was like learning to ride sand all over again.

A few miles from the day use area you can see the 300' dunes and how steep they are, and it's razor back after razor back, definitely a change for me. I'm used to being able to go 4th/5th pinned through the dunes and not have to slow down at the top of each dune. But here if you don't slow down.. you're going to be in a world of hurt! Just the immense size and area of the dunes amazed me, they have markers along pretty much a sand dune "highway" that you can follow to get out to the main dunes and bowls like Choke Cherry and Devils Dune.

The first day I was there I got to the camp site at about 6:00pm or so and we went out on a short ride and went to the closest major dune which was Crapo's Hill, about a 5 minute ride. This was the first time I had ever ridden something this big and steep.. So it took a lot of getting used to. And riding down these big steep dunes reminded me a lot of snowmobiling, coasting down and tapping the break and having your back end start to slide out on you, the feeling of the dirt bike on sand felt a lot like the sled on snow. Once we got back to camp, we got talking and I was saying how big I thought that dune was... And the guys I camped with were telling me to just wait until tomorrow...

So the second day we got up early, had breakfast and went on a long morning ride while it was still cool (about 40 degrees at 7:30am but warmed up to low 80s in the afternoon). We headed out west towards Choke Cherry and Devils Dune and had some fun in some big bowls on the way out there. We went out the Devils Dune first which was just amazing.. About 300 feet high and dang steep. It's such a fun bowl to mess around on! After playing on Devils Dune for a while we decided to head over to Choke Cherry and see who could make it up the fastest!

Turns out.. I was the only dirtbiker the other guys were all on quads (trx, yfz, ltr 450's) and one was on a '86 ATC 250R. When we got to Choke.. The first thought in my mind was there's no way i'll be able to get up this first try.. Haha but Gary on the ATC convinced me to just give it a shot, so I got a pretty good run at it and climbed it in 4th. When I went back down, I lined up with the ATC and the YFZ 450, they both got a good 1-2 bike lengths in front of me, I did a 2nd gear start and got up into 3rd right as the dune started upwards, I was surprised at how hard the CRF pulled up that hill! Flew past both the ATC and YFZ, heh, I love having a bike and being light. I've got a few pics from my phone to share. Then I will have more pics by tonight or tomorrow from one of the guys I was riding with.

So here are the pics that I have!

Here's a look at the bowl Devils Dune




Here's Choke Cherry from the bottom


Shaun on his piped/paddled YFZ 450 climbing Choke


Gary on his 86 ATC 250 wheeling up Choke Cherry

[yzernie]

I'm not much of a dune'er but I can see where that would be FUN!!

[monkeyonahill]

Yeah it's a blast I love the dunes, and sadly these pictures do Choke Cherry no justice. it's much steeper than it appears in the pictures.