If there's one thing Kellon Walch has seen a lot of, it's sand. Growing up in Nevada, he did his fair share of riding in it, and as a member of the 2005 Red Bull KTM U.S. Dakar team, he was immersed in it-literally, at times! Even so, he gladly demonstrated how he would tackle a sandy turn that follows a hard-packed surface-in this case, a downhill.
If there's one thing Kellon Walch has seen a lot of, it's sand. Growing up in Nevada, he did his fair share of riding in it, and as a member of the 2005 Red Bull KTM U.S. Dakar team, he was immersed in it-literally, at times! Even so, he gladly demonstrated how he would tackle a sandy turn that follows a hard-packed surface-in this case, a downhill.
"You definitely want to have all your braking done before you hit a [sandy] turn," Walch begins. "You want to make sure you can set up for the turn just right because if you get off the [main line], you're going to stick that front wheel and go over the bar or you're going to get squirrelly." Notice he's standing as he approaches the turn. "You can see that right before the turn there's a big bump," he points out. "You want to make sure you're standing until [you've passed] all the braking bumps-you have to be careful that your back end doesn't kick up." He's also looking ahead in the turn.
"Accelerate smoothly all the way through the turn," he advises, and you can see here where he began turning on the throttle (look at the roost still hanging in the air). "You're not going to get the greatest traction in the sand, so when you accelerate, you want to have your weight far back enough [to weight the rear] so you can really accelerate through the turn. As you get closer to the exit of the turn and feel you're in the rut decently, start to slowly slide back on the seat a little so you can get good acceleration in the sand."
He's fairly centered over the bike as he brakes here because he's transitioning forward to start weighting the front end more as he enters the turn. "You want to have your front end weighted some," he suggests, "but don't move all your weight to the front; it's not a hard-packed turn. In the middle of the bike is ideal, to make sure you don't knife [the front end].
By this time, Walch has plopped himself fully in the seat, his elbows remain up and he's looking ahead past the exit of the turn. At this point, his primary concern is getting out of the turn as quickly as possible. "When you come into the turn, you want to make sure you're in a good gear." In other words, don't have the bike in too low a gear because you'll rev out too quickly, but don't be in such a tall gear that it won't pull well. The trick is to keep your momentum as high as possible; that way the engine doesn't have to work as hard to pull out of the turn.