Dakar Diary: Big nasty dunes on relentless second stage

Saudi Arabia – Jan 5, 2025

I was away this morning at 7:27am for the first half of the 1000km chrono stage. There was only 43km of liaison, but it was freezing cold.

The first 40 km of the special was deep and relentless sand. It was some of the deepest and most difficult sand I have ever ridden – or so I thought!

The navigation was also very difficult, but I was riding a lot by myself and didn’t make many mistakes.

And then we went from sand to the worst and most difficult rocks and stones you can imagine. I thought yesterday’s rocks and stones were bad! Some of the sections were 1st gear only and I was just bouncing off rocks endlessly. By the first fuel stop my arms were jelly and I was hurting.

After the fuel stop it just got worse, 200km of sand and dunes.

I had two airbag vest deployments today, the first one was just from a hard landing off a dune. Then later in some really bad small dunes I went over the bars and deployed the 2nd cartridge in the vest.

There was a compulsory 30 minute rest at the second fuel stop. I arrived at 5:00pm and I figured I had just enough time to complete the remaining 80km and get to tonight’s desert camp.

I had one of the officials replace my airbag cartridge and he accidentally pulled the wires out and disabled the vest. It took them 40 minutes to fix it and by this time the sun was going down.

The next 80km – including another 20km of big dunes – was not looking good. Two other riders who had left 20 minutes before returned just as I was about to leave and said it was too dangerous entering the big dunes in the dark. We decided to sleep here at the fuel dump in the middle of the desert.

There are about 20 riders sleeping here, but there’s about 30 other riders stuck in the big dunes for the night.

Today was the most dunes I have ever ridden in one stretch. If we hadn’t had the bad rocks and sand this morning the dunes would have been a lot easier to negotiate. But I’m safe.

It looks like we will be in for a cold night. I have no warm gear, no food and some soft sand to sleep on.

Tomorrow, we move on.