Salton Sea
Imperial / Riverside counties · near Mecca / Niland · California Desert
Wind Sports
At a glance
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Best season
- Cooler months & spring (heat/odor in summer)
- Water temperature
- Warm much of the year — shorty/boardshorts (but hypersaline water)
What is here
- Amenities
- Vast, empty flatwater · Warm desert water · Uncrowded solitude · Surreal landscape
- Best for
- Warm, empty flatwater in the desert
- Features
- Vast empty desert flatwater · Warm water most of the year · Surreal, otherworldly setting · Total solitude
Worth knowing
- Hazards
- Hypersaline, briny water (rinse gear) · Odor & air-quality advisories · Shallow, muddy shoreline · Remote — few facilities
- Good for a first timer
- No
Guides, rentals and operators
- Lessons
- No
Wind Sports detail
- Discipline
- kite · windsurf · wing
- Conditions
- flat
- Venue
- lake
- Wind kt
- 18
- Wind
- Afternoon thermal / frontal, 12–25 kt — warm desert wind on a vast flat sea
- Intl tip
- Surreal, solitary riding on a vast warm desert sea — 12–25 kt thermal/frontal wind (spring and cooler months best; summer is dangerously hot with odor/air-quality advisories). Warm water but HYPERSALINE/briny — rinse gear thoroughly (corrosive). Shallow muddy shore, remote, few facilities. Total solitude and an otherworldly landscape. For the adventurous. A one-of-a-kind (quirky) spot.
The guide
The Salton Sea, California's largest lake — an accidental inland sea in the Colorado Desert — offers surreal, solitary wind-spo…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Salton Sea — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 33.33, -115.85