Got something more unique for you this time again. I have talked about the San Louis Valley in Colorado recently. One more place that I visited there is the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Yes, it looks like the Sahara desert, yes these sand dunes are hundreds of meters high and yes, it really is located in Colorado! More specifically on the east side of San Louis Valley, right next to the epic mountainous backdrop. Far from any towns or cities. The nearest small town is a place called Mosca and this is 30 kilometers away.
We stayed in the Great Sand Dunes lodge the previous night. This is pretty much the only place you have there to spend a night near the dunes. These first two photos were taken 5km away from the back terrace of the lodge, we had a great view.
You are probably wondering how these epic sand dunes came to exist in somewhere like Colorado. In the National Park, you can also find a visitor center. I try to spread a bit of knowledge that I read and make a short lesson on how these dunes came to be.
Basically, it's a result of certain sediments, wind and water. Over the years rivers have brought down sediments from the mountains and a lot of sand particles. The wind that mostly has blown from the west, has picked up sand particles and carried this next to the mountains of east San Louis valley. In the mountains opposing winds prevent the sand from being carried any further and this has remained the spot where the sand gets left by the winds.
There are several named dunes you can hike up to. Our plan was to hike up the High Dune which is one of the highest sand dunes there and you can get a crazy overview of the surrounding dunes.
On the spot, you can find many people. Most of them stay on the flat ground below. While reading reviews I already got scared that the hike up the sand dune is too hard and many turn around halfway there. The reasons are several.
Hiking in the sand is much harder than on the solid ground, it takes twice as much effort because with every step you slip a bit backward and into the sand when going uphill.
Sand gets unbearably hot during the mid-day so the best bet is to go early in the morning or later in the evening. Also, you want to avoid afternoon thunderstorms.
Altitude. This place is situated 8800 feet above sea level. That's 2700 meters above sea level. Hiking in sand dunes is already hard but when you are that high up, your pulse is much higher and less oxygen will get in your body. I often had near 160BPM heartbeat on harder sections.
Air humidity is also extremely low so you will lose a lot of water due to extreme exhaling, sweating and even through the skin. A LOT of water is needed there.
The air temperature wasn't that hot, around 21C degrees but it felt warmer.
The scenery was certainly something I had never seen before. Such a spectacular and unique one with these 14,000-foot-high mountains in the back.
We moved towards the dunes on a flat sandy ground...
There were several people who were sandboarding like you would do in the snow. It looked like a lot of fun but the friction is definitely more than in the snow. Most of them fell sooner or later lol 😅.
Now the uphill struggle starts. We had hundreds of meters of climbing to do. We didn't even see the dune yet that we wanted to reach. A couple of views to the sides and back.
It was extremely uncomfortable to climb with sneakers on so I removed these and went on bare feet. The slopes are a lot steeper than they appear here in the photos. Climbing up to the first slope was our first mission and we hoped that going forward from there would be a bit easier.
Having reached there we found out that there was no easy route up so we walked down from the other side a bit, only to be greeted with a new steep slope.
The great views were already appearing over the sand dunes but we still had a lot to go.
We saw one top with some people on it and wondered if this was the High dune where we wanted to reach. Well, we had to go there and find out.
It was not. There was still one a bit higher location that was the real dune we needed to get to. We were already exhausted but had to carry on. Here are all the great views we saw when we finally arrived there. In total, it took us an hour or something.
Ah, I forgot to mention. The sand got so hot that we were unable to walk bare feet any longer. So a great solution was to just walk with socks only. That worked quite well.
Enjoy the views!
The wind really picked up there. Sandblasted our legs real well. Here you can see how the dunes are blowing.
I can imagine that watching sunsets up there can be spectacular. Would have gotten some great shadowplay and colors. Unfortunately, we were on a schedule and had other places to be so we were unable to spend the whole day there. Otherwise, you can easily spend a full day hiking and seeing the nearby areas.
It was time for us to go back down. That went a lot faster, obviously. It was a lot of fun running down the steep sand dunes.
Here are some more photos I took.
You can see a river that flows down there. It is a seasonal one and the flow is the greatest in early June. You can even swim there then. It's snowmelt water from the mountains but gets warm until it reaches this location. We were there in mid-June but the water level was too low to do any swimming. Also, there are a ton of mosquitoes near the river. By late July and August, this river is usually fully gone.
We had a lot of fun staying there and doing the hike up the High Dune. It sure was hard but definitely worth it. These are the biggest and highest sand dunes in the whole of North America. We had never seen anything like this so it sure was a new experience for us. If you travel Colorado then make sure to include this in your itinerary. Just bring a lot of water if you decide to go for a hike. The visitor center is also worth checking out. A lot of interesting information to see and read about these sand dunes.