Cerro Blanco - Peru
By: Marco Malaga
When people think of dunes they imagine small to medium size sand formations in the Sahara desert. Few people know that dunes can get really big, which is why most people are totally shocked when they see dunes the size of Dumont (400 vertical feet) or Great Sand Dunes in Colorado (700 ft). The tallest dune in Europe (Pilat dune), which is just 300 feet are small in comparison while Dunes in Peru are monstrous. I am serious. Lomo de Corvina in Lima has at least 700 feet, many of the Ica dunes (south of Lima) are above 500 feet (Huacachina, Saraja, etc) and dunes like "El Filo de la Navaja" in Casma are not only huge (900 feet) but also extremely steep. There is however, a sand dune so big in fact that it defies comprehension and stretches far beyond anyone's imagination. It is the Everest of the desert and the mother of all dunes. THE DUNE. It is called Cerro Blanco and it's located 9 miles east of Nazca, about 300 miles South of Lima.
This dune, which looks more like a mountain, was first sandboarded in 1987 by a group of Italian snowboarders who made a documentary for European TV. At that time I didn't sandboard, nor knew what it was all about. However, being a die-hard skateboarder I couldn't but dream of riding that dune someday. I started sandboarding in 1988 but didn't go to Cerro Blanco until probably 1993.
Not many people had ridden the dune by then but there were many tales on how difficult the hike was. Located far away from the highway and basically in the middle of the desert, where temperatures could climb or drop very fast. My first time there was very unfortunate. I wasn't prepared for the size of the dune and the inclement weather. Me and my friend Agustin Panizo aborted the mission after climbing almost half of it. We went back to Nazca in very bad shape, dehydrated and sunburned, not a nice experience.
In 1995 the town of Nazca held a sports competition and among other sports they had sandboarding. The location was Cerro Blanco, of course. When we got to the dune the day of the competition we couldn't see the dune. It was completely covered by the thickest cloud I had ever seen. We started hiking, hoping that the cloud would go away as the day went by. Walking inside a cloud is one the craziest things I've experienced, visibility was just 10 feet and we even lost a group of competitors, it was humid and cold. We hiked for hours, probably 4 or 5, not knowing which way we were going, the only way for us was straight up. Finally some of the crew decided to quit, it made sense for everybody. It was obvious that the competition was going to be cancelled, the judges were 4 miles away from us and actually didn't know where we were.
But along with us there were photographers from some magazines and they wanted the story so we were definitively going to ride the dune. The ride was unreal and I had one of the most beautiful sights of my life when I suddenly got out of the cloud while still riding down the dune, only to find that the bottom half of the dune was uncovered, sunny and warm.
It wasn't until last year that I finally "conquered" the top of Cerro Blanco. This time we had a very well organized trip. The riders were Willy "Guti" Landazuri, Marco Malaga (me) and Sandro Garcia. Our cameraman was Gonzalo " habilidad" Seminario.
We started the day around 6 a.m. Our plan was to hike to the top early in the morning before the temperature rise. We had tons of water, food, medicines and a cell phone in case we had problems. To approach the base of the dune took us around an hour. We inspected the dune, it didn't look "that big". We decided to take the less steep but longest path. My experience of years of hiking dunes has taught me that going straight up is not always the shortest way and definitively not the easiest. The hike was very nice and we talked and joked for hours, the sight was also beautiful and the day was just perfect. We found dune formations I'd never seen anywhere else before and other interesting things like ceramics from ancient Inca cultures and red trees that resembled the Joshua tree.
As we climbed the dune got steeper and steeper, finally reaching the top we discovered the sand formed perfectly in the shape of a "knife". 5 hours is what it took for us to get there. We made a few phone calls and were surprised at how clear the signal was, I guess we were really on top of the world!
Up to that point we never discussed about how we were going to ride the dune, if we were to make several stops or just bomb it straight down in one shot. Guti and me decided for the second option and had a thrill ride, going at an average speed of 40 mph, almost flying over the hard sand! We were pretty close to each other during the whole ride and didn't stop screaming even for one second! Part of the action was caught on film, although the main problem being the camera not having a zoom powerful enough to follow us for what was more than one mile of riding. Still, that ride is what I consider to be the best sandboarding experience I've ever had. I can't wait to go back but next time I'll have a helicopter and will ride the dune many times and through all the different runs and faces. Cerro Blanco, as I said before, is the mother of all dunes and it is for sure, the biggest dune in the world.
End Note: This expedition and successful descent was accredited by DRI (Dune Riders International - USA and The Guinness Book of World Records as the longest continuous run on a sandboard. Here is the script from DRI : "12/30/98 - Marco Malaga, William Landazuri - 2.05 min. longest continuous run (1,600 m) - Cerro Blanco, Peru". Before being accepted the material was evaluated with pictures and video.
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