Playa dust is insidious. The surface of the Black Rock Desert is composed of approximately 30% quartz, 45% clays, 10% calcite, and 5% halite (source). It’s incredibly alkaline AND incredibly salty at the same time.
This means that playa dust is corrosive stuff, and it’s super difficult to remove from things.
You need to counteract the chemical properties of playa dust in order to remove it.
Here’s how to clean it off your tent, car, bike, and everything else. This works especially well on stuff like rubber window moldings.
While vinegar (which is acidic) somewhat manages to partially neutralize the alkali (basic) playa dust, the other components of playa dust seem to work together to keep it on everything and make it hard to remove.
The mixture that seems to work best is the combination of water, Calgon, and laundry soap.
For a 16oz mix, we use:
- 8 oz Water
- 6 oz Calgon
- 2 oz Laundry Soap
Having tried many different concoctions over the years, this is the one that’s worked the best so far.
We just got back from the playa, and have already run the truck through the car wash once (untreated). While the dust came off the paint finish just fine, the tonneau cover still had the distinctive gray patina of a Black Rock Desert adventure.
We decided to science this thing, and do a little test today.
Of course, we need an experimental bit and a control in order to compare and contrast. Enter some gaffer tape.
We sprayed the left side with the playa mix from the bottle above and wiped it down, and the right side was untreated. We then ran the truck through the car wash again.
Here’s what it looked like immediately after the wash.
And here’s what it looked like after we drove around for a while.
While some of the still-wet dusty bits flowed onto the left side as we drove (as you can see), the left side was WAY less playa-fied than the right side. The right side, even after two runs through the car wash, was still ashen grey, whereas the left side looked almost new where it had been sprayed.
As always, big ups to our friend Amani who turned us onto this combo a couple of years ago!