My cousin Eric is staying in Colorado, and he was kind enough to drive over and join us for our trip. And after dinner that night, Eric and I decided to head back out to the park so we could try hiking to the tallest dune before sunset. It was an optimistic plan, and we only made it about half-way there. Hiking on the dunes is a lot harder than you'd think.
Walking on sand dunes is a lot like walking on snow. Sometimes you can walk atop the sand just fine, others your foot will sink several inches and nearly disappear into the sand. If trying to go uphill, you will oftentimes start to slide right back down as soon as you plant your foot. It was exhausting, especially because the dunes are at an elevation of about 7,600 feet. For a comparison, the elevation in Little Rock where I am writing this right now is a measly 470 feet.
We hiked up as golden light hit the mountains above the dunes (which rise to an elevation of about 13,000 feet).
The dunes here began forming about 400,000 years ago.
Water from receding glaciers flooded the valley, creating streams and lakes. The water also brought down a lot of sand and sediment from the mountains, which was then blown by the predominant winds towards the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
The dunes are huge, the largest in all of North America. For a sense of scale, you can see how small the people in the pictures are.
Before starting the hike, we drenched ourselves with bug spray in a feeble attempt to keep the mosquitoes at bay (which worked a little bit). Another hiker walked past us, who clearly didn't have any bug spray. He was surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, and he looked miserable. We tried to kindly offer him some of our spray, but he nervously declined (he may not have been an English speaker so he may have thought we were trying to spray him with some mystery chemical, who knows). I felt bad for him, but he did distract some of the mosquitoes that had been pestering us all evening.
At sunset we stopped hiking and sat down to enjoy the view. It was a great experience, even if we had to share it with a few mosquitoes.
We started the hike back to the parking lot, and luckily it is much easier to hike on sand going downhill. It was almost dark by the time we made it back to the car. I took off my hiking shoes and they were completely filled with sand. I turned them upside down and a comical amount of sand dumped out. And luckily we saw the other hiker who had refused our offer of bug spray, so thankfully he survived the hike and wasn't carried away by the mosquitoes.
The next morning we woke up and started packing up our stuff in the camper. Our time at the dunes was ending, and it was time to check out. It seemed like it was about to rain, and the clouds hung low over the mountains. I ran over to get a few more pictures of the dunes under that dramatic sky before we headed out.
I'm sorry there are so many sand dune pictures here. It's such a neat park that it was hard to stop taking pictures.
OK, one last picture. This was a panoramic shot of the dunes as they stretched out across the valley.
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