Picture it. We’d left Santa Fe the day before, driving northwest across the Taos Plateau, then due north to Alamosa, Colorado. The higher we got, the colder it became. It started to snow. Hard. I was driving a rental car, hands gripping the steering wheel. Ask Mr. Adventure: I do not enjoy these situations. We made it to Alamosa and watched as the snow thickened and the temperature plummeted. As we went out for a late dinner, bundled up and leaning into the below-freezing wind, I worried about the next day’s trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve. It snowed all night.
In the morning, we woke up to a dusting on nearby roofs and lawns, but nothing on the car. It was, after all, technically spring. In mid-April, it may snow hard on the southern end of the Colorado Plateau, but it probably won’t last. We headed out to the park, 35 miles across the snow-covered San Luis Valley.
The dunes appeared as a thin, tan line across the horizon. I squinted. “Is that them?” I asked Mr. Adventure. He squinted. “I think so,” he replied. As we drove the access road at the western base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the line thickened, undulating shapes dusted in white becoming more pronounced. We’d arrived at the dunes.
Sand dunes in the Rockies, say what?
We stopped in at the visitor center to get our bearings and find out about hiking into the dunes, a somewhat daunting prospect given the below-freezing temperature and strong wind. But the cheerful volunteer on duty assured us that we’d be fine. “Just bundle up,” he advised.
Excellent exhibits explained that the dunes are formed by a cyclical dance of wind, water, and sand. The sand comes from the San Juan Mountains to the west, where southwesterly winds blow it into the valley and up against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the valley’s eastern side. Storms in the Sangre de Cristos blow from the northeast, moving sand into Sand, Medano, and Mosca creeks. The sand is washed into the valley, where prevailing winds from the southwest pick up the grains and deposit them back on the dunes, which are the tallest in North America and less than a half-million years old. The park map nicely illustrates this process.
Standing inside the toasty visitor center, we could see the winds blowing snow and sand off the dunes. Low gray clouds swept across the sky. “Are we sure we want to go out there?” I asked Mr. Adventure. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” he promised. As usual, he was right.
Crossing Medano Creek
The visitor center volunteer told us we’d need to cross Medano Creek to get into the dunes. And that meant we’d have to deal with “surge flow,” a phenomenon in which sand ridges in the wide, shallow creek form and break up several times each minute. When the ridges collapse, the water surges over the spot and the creek is momentarily deeper in that area. Crossing the creek thus meant we’d have to move fast to avoid getting wet.
It won’t surprise you to learn that Mr. Adventure bounded across Medano Creek in no time, while I got stuck in the middle, feet soaked, hypnotized by the surge flow.
Up, up, up into the dunes
Once across the creek, those dunes looked much closer, much bigger, and much windier. I could see plumes of sandy snow streaming off the tops. Up we went.
Snow had collected on the leeward side of the ridges and slopes, so we stayed next to the edge and found that the snow-dampened sand was a bit firmer to walk on.
The thing about hiking into the dunes, at least for me, was that the higher I got, the further I wanted to go. The wind was strong but invigorating, and the view was otherworldly. Khaki dunes, pine-black mountains, silvery sky. I’d crest a ridge only to see more dunes beckoning me to keep going. So we did.
A few other folks braved the elements, but we mostly had the place to ourselves. Up and down, across and around, we wandered happily, moving continually to stay warm.
Finally, we were starting to get a little cold, a little hungry, and we still had to drive over a couple of high mountain passes to get to Raton, New Mexico, that night. Time to head downslope — or rather, down, up, down, up, across, down, around, down, and back across Medano Creek, where I resoaked my feet.
Between the dunes and the mountains
The car heater cranked up, we drove up the park road to Piñon Flats Campground, where a few RVs hunched desultorily under the trees. From the campground, a packed-sand road follows the base of the dunes — after a mile it becomes a 4-wheel-drive-only, primitive road over Medano Pass to the other side of the Sangre de Cristos — and I drove perhaps a half-mile before losing my nerve (it’s a rental! on sand!) and turning back. Guess I’d used up my adventure quotient for the day, or perhaps I was anticipating the coming drive over the snowy mountains.
Park AND Preserve? Huh?
Great Sand Dunes is both a national park and a national preserve, managed by the National Park Service. The difference has to do with what’s protected and what uses are allowed.
According to the NPS: “A national park contains a variety of resources and encompasses large land or water areas to help provide adequate protection of the resources.” (One wonders which resources and land and water are protected by the 60th national park, Gateway Arch in St. Louis, but that’s a subject for another post.)
In contrast, national preserves are established to protect particular resources. Hunting, fishing, mining, and even oil extraction “may be permitted if they do not jeopardize the natural values,” and management can be handed over to local or state governments.
At Great Sand Dunes, the dunefield is the centerpiece of the 107,342-acre park, which also includes The Baca, an archaeologically and ecologically rich wetlands area. The 41,686-acre preserve comprises the forested mountains, a national forest wilderness until it was transferred to the Park Service in 2000. The transfer was part of legislation authorizing the existing Great Sand Dunes National Monument to become a national park, a goal accomplished in 2004. Hunting is allowed in certain areas of the preserve during designated seasons. More than 33,000 acres of the park & preserve — the dunefield and most of the mountain area — is designated wilderness.
Off-season is still great
Great Sand Dunes is an unusual park. After we visited, I wasn’t sure how I felt. It doesn’t have the in-your-face grandeur of some parks. The dunes have a subtle magic. Most promotional materials for Great Sand Dunes show joyful kids sledding on the slopes and splashing in Medano Creek during summertime. It definitely looks fun. But Mr. Adventure and I had the opportunity to come during a much slower time, and while our experience was different (colder, for one thing), I wouldn’t trade it.
