Surfing the Coral Pink Sand Dunes

I crossed off another bucket list item: sandboarding in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. This park is only 30 minutes from our house in Utah so after work in the morning, we spent the afternoon surfing the sand. 

We had the option to rent boards or sleds but we chose boards because we like to shred. We got two boards for three people but could've easily gotten away with getting just one because by the time you make it back to the top of the dune you need a break to catch your breathe. They give you a little ball of wax too which helps give you some momentum down.

For our first attempts, we opted for a small dune to get a feel for it.  The boards are super easy to slip on your feet and are one size fits all. You can either keep your socks on or go barefoot, I chose to free my toes. We took a couple runs, got some faceplants out of the way, and headed further up the dune to step it up. The sand was so fine and soft that falling didn't hurt too bad, but we did have buckets of sand stuck in every crevasse of our clothes, bags, and phones.

At the top of the dune we took our sweet time enjoying the view. This side was much smoother so we had our fair share of wipeouts because the board went noticeably faster. Clearly we were one of the few groups to venture this far up. We figured we needed to get the full experience while we were there so our motto was the standard, "go big or go home." That's how I like to roll. 

Once the sun started to go down we packed up our stuff and mentally prepped for our trek back to the car. Walking this far in the dunes was a calf workout! My co-pilot and I decided to try a different technique by riding down the dune on the board like a snow sled. It was a disaster. We didn't get very far before toppling over, several times. We didn't capture these moments but it would've made you laugh as hard as we were.

If you're in the area, definitely add this adventure to your list and give yourself about 2 hours. We wanted to rent dune buggies but the company that operates in the park was sold out for the rest of 2020 so note that you need to make reservations far in advance. I left with some great wipeout footage, among some successful trips down the dune - send it!