I could practically feel the grit of sand in my teeth and the harsh desert sun beating down while reading Patrick Steel’s sensory-overload account in the Guardian of carving Saharan dunes atop a snowboard in Morocco. While duneboarding is nothing new on the extreme sports circuit, the story brought back memories of my own failed attempts at riding sand. So many times—New Zealand, Uruguay and Australia all come to mind—I have followed my guidebook’s suggestion to rent a board and cruise down the nearby dunes only to fail miserably. The sand sticks to your board in a way snow never would, and when you catch an edge it’s all the more miserable.

Steel seems to have been more succesful than I was, although he admits there’s a learning curve when switching from the white stuff to cumin-colored peaks. In the end, it’s the novelty of the experience and the stunning setting that are worth the trudge back uphill.

He writes:

It wasn’t until after five o’clock, with two hours of daylight left, that the temperature had dropped enough to go into the village to find the only ski hire shop in the Western Sahara where, 100 dirhams (£6) later, I was given the use of a gold-coloured snowboard with “Rad Air” emblazoned across the tip.

I didn’t get much air, but it was pretty radical. Practising an extreme sport in the extreme beauty of the desert was a sensory overload that left a lasting impression on me. As the sun sank behind the distant Atlas Mountains and the stars began to come out in the clearest night sky I have ever seen, I wandered back through the dusk in search of a cold drink to get rid of the taste of the sand that, despite the headscarf, was crunching between my teeth.

Sounds like Saharan-style apres-ski. Pretty radical, indeed.