Trip Report Beat the Heat Yellow Truck Liwa 23 August

[tompa-bjorka]

4 FJ drivers took on the fun to go look for the Yellow Truck in Liwa early Friday morning:

Myself (Thomas)
Ajesh
Mark
Kevin

We all met up at around 7 AM at ADNOC Madinat Zayed. After filling gas, we continued another 12 km towards Liwa and entered the desert at the Fudder farms. From the deflation point we had about 30 km straight line to the GPS waypoint for the Yellow Truck. The dunes started out kind of flat but quickly changed character and got bigger. The sand was really soft and we soon had to stop to adjust the tire pressure. Temperature this morning was really nice, just slightly above 30 degC. Also there was a thin cloud layer which remained the entire drive, this helped keep the temperature down and also to give better contour visibility, which usually becomes bad as sun rises higher. The drive toward the truck was clearly interesting, some really big dunes and as lead had to be really careful as the terrain was “unpredictable”, quite a lot of sharp ditches and small bowl where usually you would not expect such, maybe because of winds changing directions more frequently in this area than where we usually go. So, around 10 AM, we reached the famous “Yellow Truck” without issues, this truck apparently has been sitting in the same position since someone left it 15 years ago. Now quite rusty and largely covered by sand, a very interesting odd object in the desert. Well worth the trip to go there. After a good long break by the truck, eating delicious water melon brought by Mark, we headed back towards the inflation point, which we reached about 12:30 PM.

In total we drove just above 100 km back and forth from deflation to inflation, so it was quite a long drive. Cool terrain with some big dunes, but also quite tricky with the soft sand and somewhat unpredictable here and there. So, need to be a bit extra careful as it is a long way out if some mechanical trouble would appear. We will certainly go back in the coming season to explore the other parts of this area.

All FJ drivers (well I guess we were only FJ drivers today….) of course did exceptionally well.

Wildlife spotted: Gecko, antilopes, birds and a bunch of camels.

See you soon in the sand.

/Thomas

[Ajesh]

Thanks Thomas for the awesome lead. Adrenaline levels remained high through most of the drive . Despite some ruggedness, the big dunes were drivable and the suspensions got a good work out.

Its been a while since I have done high speed cresting and it was fun to get back to doing them.

The FJ group was awesome as always.

Definitely an area to be revisited again and its not liwa
like distant from the city. There were more sedate tracks visible as well so its possible that a newbie/intermediate trip could be planned as well.

Till next time..

20200824_084057.jpg

20200824_084024.jpg

20200824_083951.jpg

20200824_083935.jpg

[loefflmj1]

Thanks Marshal Thomas. Awesome drive. New area. Never been. Was very hesitant at first to go due to temperature concern but glad went and it was really fun drive. Pretty challenging out there. Really cool very long smooth slopes to go up and down. Definitely tricky area but also a straight shot newbie path to truck.
Thanks again.
MARK