February 19th and 20th saw the annual Dark Skies Challenge take place in the Liwa area. Teams started arriving at Arada late afternoon on Thursday 18th, ready for an early start to driving on Friday morning. Another night’s camping was required on the Friday, before exiting the desert near Ghayathi on Saturday at lunchtime.
Concept
I have always had a passion for long-distance drives – trips which involve spraying sand around for three hours. Covering 20kms or less is just not my thing at all, although I know many off-roaders just love them. A couple of years ago I dreamt up the Dark Skies Challenge to allow me to share my overlanding passion with my friends at Oasis Offroad; the inaugural event in 2014 was so successful it was opened up to external entries in 2015.
Many UAE off-road clubs host challenge trips, each is unique in its own way but I believe this is the only team-based long distance challenge for amateur drivers. One team leader joked that I have more rules than the FIA (Federation Internationale Automobile), but this is necessary to keep all cars safe – in three years we have had over 150 cars participate and with the exception of one recovery point which broke and caused damage, we have not had one single car requiring a police report; not bad for approximately 25,000kms driven purely on sand!
One of the great things about driving on road in the UAE is that most main roads are lit, however that means it is really difficult to find a truly dark sky, free from light pollution. In the Western Desert, you find yourself so far from civilization that the night sky is inky black and dotted with thousands of stars, hence The Dark Skies Challenge!
The Route
Considerable thought was given to the course; firstly, it had to be in a very remote area where drivers could reach at least 100kms from the road, yet have an easy exit from the campsite in case of medical or vehicle emergency; the location also had to be far away from settlements so there would be no light pollution; the track itself had to be varied. 100kms+ of full on, technical dunes would be exhausting for all but the most experienced of drivers and I wanted to open the event up to intermediate drivers so they too could get a taste of desert overlanding.
I found the perfect place in the west and northwest of Arada; the first 10kms of the course goes over large, tightly packed dunes, followed by 40kms or so of large dunes with valleys in between. The next part of the route offers some respite as you cross dune lines which are orientated north-south instead of the usual east-west of Liwa, these are interspersed with wide plains. The final 20kms are through soft, white, technical dunes, designed to test both the driving skill and the mental strength of the participants!
As if that were not enough, to gain some bonus KMs, the teams had to find “buried treasure” at a waypoint close to the straight line. I am always amazed how excited everyone is about finding their treasure, even though every expense is spared! The true prize in each box is a “get out of stuck free” card, some of which were played on the last technical section!
The route always takes in one or two date plantations and in 2016 it was Al Shlahh Farm; teams had to locate a sign which said “you were at the farm”, except I neglected to tell them the sign was in Arabic. A few teams cottoned on and submitted some great team pictures!
The Teams
The DSC has a very good safety record and I attribute this to the high quality of the drivers and the rules put in place to ensure that we never wave four rookies off into the vastness of the Maghrib (western desert)! Each team is headed up by a driver who leads trips for their own club, or if they do not belong to a club, someone who can convince me they can take care of a convoy! The rest of the team is made up of one intermediate driver, plus one advanced; the fourth member of the team can be either leader/intermediate/advanced.
2016 saw participation from five teams from Oasis Offroad (Desert Safari, Oasis Scorpios, Sand Drifters, the Xtrapajeeps and Wahat Ahzawiwi), Desert Hawks, Desert Raiders, Dubai Offroaders, two teams from UAEoffroaders (Highjacked Again and The Falcons), Jeepers (Jeepers Bigfoot), 2 teams from Knightriders (1 and 2), one team from Qatar (The Bowl Busters) and one private team (Snappy’s Sand Surfers).
Each team had to be self-sufficient for the duration of the event, having to carry all their camping gear, extra petrol, firewood and food – our Friday evening camp was going to be as “far away from it all” as you can in the UAE!
Thursday Evening
Our first arrivals were the ones who had to travel the furthest – around 4:00 p.m. we welcomed a forward party of two cars from the Qatar Bowl Busters and soon after many others started to arrive. Each team was encouraged to go along the gatch a little and find their own private campsite with instructions to return to control to pick up their food (mixed grill) from the event control at around 7:30 p.m.
The last team to make it to the campsite was the Falcons who had driven all the way from Dubai after work, hence their late arrival, and once they were settled for the night it was time for me to turn in and hope for good weather the next morning
Friday Morning
After the sandstorm which exfoliated everyone back in DSC 2015 (See OutdoorUAE April 2015 – Riders on The Storm) I submitted a special request for good weather and whilst we were all grateful not to have a sandstorm, instead we had to deal with thick fog on Friday morning!
For safety reasons the start was delayed until there was 500 metres visibility which meant that wheels did not start turning until 10:00 a.m., three hours later than planned. Once the teams were off I headed to the end point via the road and desert tracks, seriously wondering if anyone would make it before nightfall – one of the many safety rules in place is that there is to be no night driving, unless a team is accompanied by the sweep team – but amazingly, from around 4:30 p.m. onwards, teams started arriving! In fact 14 teams plus one sweep made it through in time, unfortunately the Highjacked Again team had a vehicle issue and with guidance and a little help from Sweep Two they were heading for the road via a sandtrack. Sweep Two almost made it to the campsite but tiredness was setting in and with their job done for the day they opted to remote camp a few kilometres from the rest of us.
Friday evening
In an effort to bring everyone together in the evening, albeit for a short time, we held a quiz with a UAE/driving/sky theme and the teams all got into the spirit of things. One of our sponsors, the fantastic Southern Sun Hotel in Abu Dhabi provided us with a voucher as a prize for the quiz and Oasis Scorpios won it with an impressive score. I was amused at answers to one question – how many speeding tickets has The Desert Diva received in 30 years of driving – someone guessed 57! (The answer was one, caught in Liwa last year.)
Saturday Morning
After a relatively leisurely breakfast everyone was gone from our camp by 10am and I joined the rear sweep to get some proper desert driving in. The final 50kms should have been slightly easier than the previous day as there was a very easy route just to the west of the straight line; the last teams opted to go to the east and there was nothing else to do but follow their line, going against the run of the dunes which was rather fun!
The team with the shortest recorded track was the Desert Raiders, in second place Jeepers Bigfoot and in third place the Oasis Scorpios – well done to you all.
There are no prizes for the fastest distance or indeed the shortest, instead all participants have the chance to compete for prizes in our photo competitions; the winning photos, along with a few of my favourites are printed here. We had great support from OutdoorUAE magazine who donated copies of Mike Nott’s guidebook along with a paracord bracelet for those who came second in the competitions. Our other sponsors for the competitions were Alcatel OneTouch GoPlay who gave us a smartphone to use for the event and extra ones to give out as first prize in the photo competition and also Coleman who donated cool boxes for those placed third. Our event t-shirts were kindly donated by Eastern Motors Jeep from Al Ain – a huge thank you to all our sponsors.
The whole event would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our sweep teams; four winch-owning friends (Ian, Shaun, Alan, Katy and Chris) who are involved in the ADDC and/or Baja events – formed the backbone of the two sweep teams who were supplemented by two marshals from Oasis Offroad (Nic and Karen and Manhar and Melissa). An Emirati friend came along with three more cars to assist which meant we had more than enough cover to cope with any situations.
I would like to thank everyone involved in the event; the teams – from those who came back for the second and in some cases third year to ones who entered for the first time; to our sponsors for providing fantastic prizes; and to the sweep teams and others who supported me; thank you all so very much – planning the 2017 event already!
Words by: Marina Bruce
Pictures by: Participating teams
