Better Than Great

Great Sand Dunes National Park, Part Two

The next morning we woke up before the dawn, made the long trek back down the rocky Zapata Falls Road. We were at the Great Sand Dunes park entrance in no time. It was dark, and the air had a little chill to it, so we put on light jackets, grabbed our water bottles and our sand boards, and started walking out onto the dunes. They were massive in person. I could see a person or two already walking out on them, and they looked like ants.

Hiking up to sled down before the sun heated up the sand.

The sand was cold, the kind of cold that almost feels damp below the surface. It wasn’t, of course. In some places, it was hard like concrete and felt like walking on a solid floor, and in other places, it gave beneath our feet, and each step felt laborious. When we got to the top of the first one we wanted to slide down, we took a quick break to catch our breath. It was then I realized how high up we were. Significantly higher than any hill I’d ever sledded down before. Michael went first, and we realized after a few attempts these boards could move. Like, stupid fast. Wipeout is eminent fast. After that, we sat down on our little boards and used them as sleds and kicked ourselves for not renting sleds instead.

Me giggling when I realized these sand boards were ridiculously fast and we needed to use them like sleds or we were going to get hurt.

It took several go-rounds to get the hang of it. The correct sitting position. The way you could try to drag your fingers into the sand to slow down, steer, or provide some extra stability (but the sand would burn the skin off your fingers at that speed, so it was a balancing act). The trek up the dunes was worthwhile every time. We flew down those hills, sometimes screaming from delighted fear, sometimes wiping out epically on the way down, and giggling even harder. We must have had twenty laps each on different dunes. I have dozens of videos of us laughing our asses off while we careen recklessly away from the camera. Sometimes even going up and over the next adjacent dune in a single go and disappearing from view.

At close to 9am, it was already getting hot, and we had been sledding for almost three hours. We were exhausted, hungry, and had sand filling every exposed orifice. We trekked back to the van, tried to shake out as much sand as we could, gave ourselves a little birdy bath in the sink, changed clothes, and made our way to the visitor’s center to secure a backcountry permit. There was only one couple in line to get a permit, so securing one was easy. (I think since then walk up permits are no longer an option at GSD, you must reserve them in advance.) The plan that night was to hike out into the dunes for my first ever backpacking trip. It was just an overnight, but I had never camped without my vehicle nearby before. I was stoked. I had bought my backpacking pack for a six-day trip on the High Sierra Trail that was canceled because of the pandemic, so this would be my first time testing out the new gear.

We returned our sandboards to the rental company, and then returned to the park. We rested in the van during the heat of the day when most visitors were out and about. A couple hours before sunset, we emerged well rested and started walking. There was a small stream of water that trickled between the parking lot and the dunes, and we followed it upstream to get away from the crowds. Within 30 minutes, it felt like we were alone in the park. The water was refreshing on our feet and beat walking on the hot sand.

A small but steady stream that made the start of our journey much more pleasant.

Once we could no longer see signs of civilization, we turned away from the stream and walked up the dunes. The backcountry permit specified we had to be beyond the first horizon line. But we intended to go much farther. We didn’t want anyone to stumble onto our campsite by accident. We hiked about three miles out, up and over and up and over and up and over. It was crazy how vast it seemed. It would be easy to get turned around out there if we didn’t have our own footsteps in the sand behind us. I worried, briefly, that the wind would blow our footsteps away in the night and we wouldn’t be able to find our way back to the van. But all we had to do was walk up to the top of a tall dune to see the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and orient ourselves again.

In some places, the sand had distinct ridges from the wind. In other places it was smooth and undisturbed, and it was easy to imagine no human had ever set foot there before. I imagined that the sand dunes would be much more desert-like, shifting and changing shape, so it was a surprise to me how many small plants and brush took root in them. They grew out in the middle of the vast expanse. At one point we even saw hoof prints, though those were much closer to the stream and not out in the open dunes. I had studied the park brochure, curious about what other kinds of wildlife we might see. There is an endangered beetle that lives only in the park and nowhere else on the planet, so I got my hopes up to see one of those buggers, but despite my constant vigilance, we didn’t see any beetles during our visit.

As the sun started setting, we picked a place to make camp; a nice bowl that would hopefully be sheltered from the wind.

Time to stop and make camp before it gets too dark!

This camp out was one I was eagerly anticipating. The Great Sand Dunes National Park is a certified international dark sky location, meaning there’s minimal (if any) light pollution interfering with the view of the night sky. After setting up our tent and eating dinner, stars already blanketed the sky. Michael suggested we pull our sleeping pads out onto the sand so we could comfortably lie down and enjoy the view. It was incredible. I have never seen such a crystal clear Milky Way. The dunes already made me feel like I was on a different planet, just Michael and me alone in the world. But now I felt close to systems thousands of light years away. It was magical in every way.

After a while, we got up and walked around the dunes in the dark. But it was really dark, so we turned on a small lantern next to our tent so we could find our way back after we wandered away. Still, I was paranoid about wandering too far and losing sight of the lantern. That became a non-issue a few hours later when the moon rose. When we made our way back to the tent to go to sleep, we realized we had never put the sleeping pads back in the tent before our night hike, and one of them had blown away.

I panicked a little. “What are we going to do?! We lost a sleeping pad!” I didn’t know how we would ever find it out here in this alien landscape. In my mind, it was already three states away.

Michael laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it will be easy to find in the morning. It can’t have gone too far.” He was right. In the morning we found it just one dune over, in a little bowl much like the one we camped in.

Our little backcountry camping spot out among the dunes.

As we packed up camp that morning, it was fun to see all the tracks of the different places we had explored in the night. We hiked back out the way we came, over dune after dune after dune, back toward the mountains, until we arrived at the little trickle of water over the sand and followed it downstream. This had been the last destination on our two-week vacation. Before we left, I had never hiked a 14er or done an overnight backpacking trip. I came back having done both, and with a brand new fiancé by my side. So the journey was unforgettable in multiple ways, but the Great Sand Dunes ended up being my favorite destination of the trip.

Taking in the views on our hike out.