Great Sand Dunes

Great Sand Dunes, CO

May 6-8 2011

My brother was in US on a month's visit, and was to stay at Fort Collins, CO for two weeks. I decided to visit him and we decided to go to Great Sand Dunes National Park for the weekend. They are the tallest dunes in America and is about 5 hours drive from Fort Collins, or about 4 hours from Denver. I had flown into Denver and taken the 'SuperShuttle' to his hotel Cambria Suites at Fort Collins on friday evening. We drove to REI, and rented a two-person tent, a sleeping bag and two sleeping mats. We also got some food and water to last us for the next day and night. We set out to the park on saturday, early morning, around 6.30am or so. The weekend was supposed to be warm and it was indeed a gorgeous day.

Our drive was quite scenic, and many of the views I have had from previous trips in Colorado came back to me...those during the amtrak journey from Denver to Grand Junction and vice versa, and from Denver to Boulder. My brother was having a good time, though, soaking in the scenic landscapes and taking pictures and videos as often as he could. As we approached the national park, we could see the stretch of the Great Sand Dunes with the backdrop of the Sangre De Cristo mountain range. It was quite a contrast. Imagine a desert-like land right in front of alpine forest. What a combination! We reached the entrance to the park at around 11.30, and hoped that there would be campsites still open in Loop1. Loop2 was fully booked. Luckily enough, we got a site just before the loop ended, site number 41, I think. Having secured a site, we had a bite and set out to the visitor centre to get some information on climbing the dunes. As it turned out, there were two major peaks recommended for climbing - High dunes and Star Dunes. The High dunes was closer, and the ranger told us that the Star Dunes could be seen from the High dunes.

Here is some information from a pamphlet about the dunes-

The sand originated from the San Juan mountains, over 65 miles to the west. Wind and water have been the primary movers of the sand. These dunes are estimated to be 12000 years at the very least. Research apparently still continues. The height of the dunes comes about because of southwesterly and north-easterly winds. The sand deposit apparently covers about 330 square miles. There are two major, shallow but swift creeks that serve as lifeblood for dunelife - Medano and Sand Creek. The national park is unique because it offers a variety of vegetation - desert, alpine and prairie!

So then, at about 1pm, we set out to climb the High dune, which is about 650ft or 198m in height. Well, to say the very least, we completely underestimated the height of these things. First thing, climbing sand is no joke. For whatever effort you put in, the return is maybe a few percent of it...Above a certain height, I was getting scared of going further because we were walking on slopes and I was constantly slipping with every step. My fear was that I would slip and end up at the base of the dune in some valley. Well, with some much-needed encouragement and support from my companion climber, we inched towards the peak. The good thing was that it was windy, which helped in bringing down the temperature of the air and the sand quite a bit. My brother was wearing sandals. The bad thing was, atleast for me, sand was getting into my shoes and after a while, it felt like I was dragging along a small sack of sand on my feet. I was visibly tired, though after getting finally to the peak. What was supposed to take us 1hour and 15min, took us 2 hours to get to the top. I sat down for good for some rest. As I discovered, it was a bad place to rest, since I was on a ridge, and there were strong winds coming in from two directions, alternating with each other. It made things a lot worse, with sand getting into my ears, nose, eyes, clothes through all possible openings. Well, no choice but to wait it out. My brother went on to climb a nearby peak, took some pictures and returned after nearly 20min, I think. If I remained longer, I am sure there would be a sand pile slowly building upon me. And boy, was I glad to start back down. Our descent took us less than an hour, I think. Once I learnt the technique of keeping a steady pace and not giving too much time for your feet to sink into the sand, I was happy to trot down, rather enjoying the views of the Cristo mountains and watching what other people were upto.

It was nearly 4pm by the time we got to the base. There was plenty of time left for sunset, and the plan was to get back to campsite, put up the tent in time for sunset, which was around 8pm. We set out to Zapata Falls, about 2.5miles away from the national park, and had passed it on our way in. It was a good thing we had taken the campsite, since otherwise we would have had to look for a campsite at Oasis Campground nearby, which I believe is about a few miles away from the national park. The ride upto the trailhead of Zapata falls was on mud roads, and we had our fears about any loose rock hitting the underside or puncturing the tires...etc..but then we got there. The trailhead was only about 1/2 mile. It was quite pleasant and it was here that I saw a violet-green swallow in flight. It was this bright metallic green shade and I was pretty sure of the bird. We reached the falls area and saw that the creek was still not completely water, and had plenty of ice. My brother walked a bit further to explore the areas with ice in between crevices and cliffs. I stayed on, listening for birds or wildlife. It was a good place to rest a while. We headed back, and got to our campsite at about 6.00ish. The next adventure was to set up the tent.

Having had some experience in setting up a 6-person tent back in Florida, I thought this was easy-peesy. As I discovered, all tents are not made the same way, obviously. This one had no 'crossing' of the two big poles and that was my first mistake. The air was getting chillier and drier. After battling with the two biggest poles for nearly half hour, we finally figured out how they were supposed to be. The next battle was with the rain fly. I am sure we would have never cursed any other object so much as the rain fly that day. It just seemed totally counter-intuitive. Anyhow, by the time we got that figured out, it was a little after sunset, and twilight had set in. It was nearly 8.30pm and we were starving and quite tired. Had an apple, but being more tired than hungry, decided to sleep early enough. I was in bed by 9.00 or so, I think. My brother had gone to bed about 20min earlier, I think. I was quite cosy and slept well till about 2.00am, I think. The cold woke me up, and I could not find more protection for my toes (they get coldest the fastest and stay coldest the longest). Anyhow, I slept fitfully after that, waking every hour or so...(this was better than Grand Teton, where I used to wake up every 15min or so, thanks to the cold).

I finally got out of bed at 5.15am, and decided to walk around, capture sunrise, and do some birding (this would be the first time I would be birding alone). It was quite chilly, but walking helped a bit. I could hear some bird calls, and occasional fluttering of wings nearby, none recognisable, though. Daylight was slowly coming in. I soaked in the view of the first rays of the sun on the snow-clad Cristo mountains and took some pictures. The sun was lighting up the dunes as well (we had a decent panoramic view of the dunes as well). I watched a herd of mule deer as they came close the campsite, feeding on the grasses. There were many birds, out of which I could identify a few, Scrub Jay, brown-headed cowbird, some swallow, raven, chipping sparrow, turkey vulture...the best part was, the binoculars enormously reduced my frustration of my lack of knowledge of bird names. I could identify features upclose and use it to confirm or search for the bird in the book. The sight of the turkey vultures on the mountain sides was quite something. It was about 7.45 and life was stirring in all the campsites. Since we had some time before driving back to Denver airport, we decided to go for a short hike upto Medano creek, however far we could get. I saw more birds on the way, including some swallows, possibly vesper sparrows and more ravens. We walked till the Sand pit, the view from which was quite good. There was a stream below, with the dunes and the mountains behind it. It was nearly 9.00am and we had walked about an hour, which meant that it would take us that much time to head back. We had already packed everything in our car before we started on the trail. So we saved quite a bit of time on that and could start immediately. Our drive was shorter (we were driving about 5-10mph over the speed limit) and we reached 'Masala', a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Denver. Hungry, we had a good lunch, and headed to the airport. I had about 2 hours at the airport, during which I slept for a while. Well..for a weekend trip, I think we had a fairly good time! I would have loved to go all the way to Medano creek, but anyways, maybe another time!