Heat Wave

An interview with sandboarding pioneer and guru Lon Beale

Sliding is how it all started. Not down grass, or snow, or on a playground. But on the sand. Lon Beale, otherwise known as Doctor Dune, founder of Dune Riders International, owner of Sand Master Park in Oregon, has dedicated his entire life to the idea of surfing the sand, competitively and for kicks. And while our story starts deep in the Mojave Desert, the sport that Lon brought to life back in the ‘70s has taken him around the globe — from Ireland to Saudi Arabia — to sands few have touched, let alone boarded down. It’s as spiritual as it is addictive, according to Lon. We sat down with the doctor himself to find out how sandboarding took off and why the sand continues to call him. Take it away, Lon.

The Flow Trip: What first drew you to take a board to sand?

Lon Beale: I grew up in the Mojave Desert, and we were surrounded by dunes, so we would visit them with the Boy Scouts. And when you're on top of the dune, it's only natural to want to slide or roll down, or leap and balance any way you can. So it was kind of an evolutionary process of trying different materials — cardboard, plastic, even old car hoods were fair game back then. But even though they didn't slide real well or maneuver at all, it was still fun, and that was the clincher. You were having a good time doing something down the dunes.

FT: How did this eventually end up becoming a recognized sport? Explain the momentum you saw behind the early stages of it.

LB: I started taking an interest in sandboarding in 1972, but it wasn't much of a sport back then. It was just us kidding around on the dunes. Then, after working for a few years in the surf industry and teaching high school for a number of years, we saw how board sports were very popular and attractive to the kids — skateboarding, surfing, and snowboarding. Every board sport just seemed to catch, and I always felt that sandboarding was missing its day. We'd go to trade shows in the surf industry, look at the different booths, and I kept expecting to see sandboarding somewhere, but it just wasn't happening. So the light bulb over my head lit up, and I thought, “Well, maybe I should do it?” 

We started putting a lot of effort into developing the actual board. It took a lot of experimenting, but by 1991, we were actually doing production boards. One of the big breakthroughs was to stop treating the sand like it was an offshoot of snowboarding — because it's not snow, and it doesn't act like snow. The properties of sand are more like a liquid. 

So we started approaching it more like surfing, and that really gave us big advancements in the sport. Now we could actually maneuver the board because we weren't trying to cut through “snow,” we were pushing through “surf.” That was probably the biggest jump, along with developing waxes for the boards. These actually raised the speed from 15 miles an hour to 50 or 60 miles an hour on a big dune, which is crazy (but, you know, some people love that stuff).

FT: How did you feel about the sport taking off from competitions to championships?

LB: It was very satisfying. When we first started making production boards, we had a good team of snowboarders who crossed over wanting to do sandboarding, and we were having a World Championship Series. We were doing this here in the US in different states, down into Mexico, South America, over in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and even South Africa. And it took off from there. There are really two different “disciplines” of sandboarding. You have competitive and you have recreational. What we found was that competitive sandboarding was much more disciplined, and the gear was a much higher quality of technology, because the sandboarders were trying to do the same kind of tricks they were doing on snow. But the majority of the people didn't want to compete. They just wanted to have fun.

I love it. To see it take off the way it has — that’s amazing. We rent boards constantly at Sand Master Park. And when you have 100 people a day come back into your store and say, “This is the most fun we ever had. I can't wait to do this again,” you feel really good about what you're doing.

FT: Any advice you would give to someone who wants to try sandboarding for the first time?

LB: Yes, I'd say, if it's your first time, take a lesson. It will put you months ahead. You’ll have a lot more success and a much better experience. And secondly, if you're a boarder of other board sports, don't approach it like you're doing your board sport on sand. Get that out of your head. Approach it like it's something totally new. That way, you're not going to bring your known habits from your old board sport to a new board sport and instead can enjoy it as something new.

FT: Tell us the story of how you got the name Doctor Dune.

LB: I have a lot of passion for the dunes and their health. I’ve actually analyzed different sand from all around the world. I take a sample from every dune that I've ridden. So at this point, I've got about 150 samples. People would see me analyzing these samples in a tube, and looking at them under a microscope, and they started saying, “You're the doctor of sand.” And then eventually it got to be Doctor Dune.

When we first started sandboarding, we would collect a sample from the very track that our board made. So when we say we rode this sand, we literally rode that sand, and it kind of got to be a tradition. Everybody who rode at an event or session with us would put a handful of sand in the bottle. It meant something to everybody who was there.

FT: Growing up in the Mojave and taking up this sport, how has this impacted your appreciation for the desert — a landscape usually deemed barren and uninhabitable?

LB: I’ve been to many deserts around the world, and they're all beautiful. Some have absolutely beautiful sand, colors, wildlife, and dunes. Then there’s the desert itself — the structure, the dynamics of it, how it got to be there in the first place. Many are actually ancient seas that have dried up, and the sand is what was left behind. That is very fascinating to me, because you can't help but look at a mountain of sand and ask, “How did it get here?” And when you do a little bit of the research, you realize it all came from some place.

FT: Other than the obvious, what are some parallels you find between surfing dunes and surfing waves or snow? What about culturally?

LB: Absolutely, when you're out on the dune, you can't help but have an appreciation for it. It's peaceful. All the lines of the dunes are very, very sensuous. They’re soft curves. You see very nice textures. You'll see an eagle flying overhead. You see the trees waving in the background. It's very easy to get caught up in the moment and just enjoy your surroundings before you even take that first run. And then, of course, you take that run and the adrenaline kicks in. You're like, “Oh my god, I gotta have more.” And you're going right back up, you know?

I'd say it's closer to surfing in that way. Skateboarding is a little more edgy, a little more hardcore. With snowboarding, you're out in nature, so you have that aspect too. But one of the nice things about sandboarding is you don't need all the gear. You don't need to protect yourself from the cold. You don't need the helmets and the goggles and the gloves and all that — you could be out there in your swim trunks and ripping down the dune in beautiful weather under the sun and having a great time with it, just like a surfer would do.