| Sand Mountain – December 2013
By Jon Crowley Sand Mountain Recreation Area can be quite cold in the winter. The dune lies in northern Nevada just outside of Fallon and sits at about 4,000 feet. Temperatures in the teens are common at night and if you can reach 50 degrees during the day, consider yourself lucky. It just so happened that the forecast looked decent enough for our crew to stay closer to home at Sand Mountain instead of heading to a warmer Southern California. As we drove out through Nevada, we found Fallon completely socked in with freezing fog. As we headed out past Fallon, the fog started to clear, but many of the surrounding mountains were icy. The weather pattern for the weekend was freezing fog rolled in at night and burned off during the day. It was the first time I had experienced fog like this and I wasn’t a big fan of it. I brought along my RZR XP 1000 and had just spent time adding a few goodies to it in preparation for King of the Hammers in February. To give it a little more power, I added a Muzzys Performance dual exhaust and Gen 4 Digitune. Up front we added a new Warn ProVantage 3500 winch. I added Rigid Industries amber accent lights and finished off the wiring with UTV Inc.’s switch panel and backlit rocker switches. I threw on our GMZ sand tires and was ready to hit the dunes.
I had my son with me and we went on a bunch of rides, plus did a little geocaching. He took a few action shots with his new 55mm – 300mm lens he got for Christmas.
On Saturday, we hooked up with a group that had come out for the day from Reno. Turned out a few were from Copter Kids and do action videos from RC helicopters for a living.
They were out to have some fun, but also wanted to test a new six rotor helicopter that held a Canon 5D in a gimbal setup. The technology was awesome and the little test video they put together really looks professional. Check out the video. |
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