Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is on Google Maps with a location of simply “Colorado,” so I’ll orient it by saying it’s roughly in the center of the southern part of the state, and that’s as good as I’m gonna get.

Even though it’s about 20 miles south of Crestone (where we were visiting) as the crow flies, it was almost 60 miles of driving to get to it. The surrounding geography makes it tough to access, but as you approach it’s hard not to be impressed. There’s mountains behind the dunes, and it truly looks like someone just dumped some big piles of sand in front of them. Miles and miles of big piles of sand.

This picture was taken at the place we rented the sleds, outside of the park. See what I mean that it looks like a pile of sand was dumped in front of the mountains?

The original park was designated in 1932 and encompassed nearly 56 square miles, but in 2004 it was updated to four times the size! Only a small portion of that are dunes (about 30 square miles), and we visited just a small portion of those. It’s not easy to walk on the dunes, and it’s very hot, so it doesn’t take much to get your fill.

The park has the tallest sand dunes in North America, reaching up to 750 feet tall. The park contains an estimated 1.2 cubic miles or 5 billion cubic meters of sand! Sand temperatures can reach 150 degrees in the summer (when we were there), so needless to say, we made sure to get there earlier in the day.

Trying to look like we have street cred with our sleds. Or should I say, “sled cred”?

You can of course just hike over the sand, but the fun thing to do is rent a sled or sandboard and experience the park that way.

We’re too old to sandboard, but sledding seemed reasonable – until we were standing atop a dune and looking down.

Um, that looks a little steeper than anticipated?

What the sled looked like after a ride down. So yes, we had sand everywhere.

Fortunately, someone showed us how to use your hands dragging behind you to control your speed – but just a little bit. Steering seemed near impossible. We obtained short bursts of great speed (our hats blew off!) and it was hard not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it.

The park loses a star for not having a chairlift back to the top of the dunes (I’m kidding!!). So it’s definitely a workout climbing sand (one step forward, one slide back), and it didn’t take long before the “I’m gonna go climb to the top of that over there!” turned it “this seems good enough.” Within two hours we’d had our fill – and had the sand everywhere on our person to prove it!

The patterns in the sand were very pretty!

There’s also a visitors’ center, which we tried to go to but the parking lot was full! However, the park is also an International Dark Sky Park, so we’ll need to come back someday to experience that, and we’ll have to catch the visitors’ center then.

Fun fact: my girlfriend Krissy once hiked from her house in Crestone all the way to the dunes’ parking lot. This was a 20-mile or so hike that ending with the worst part: walking through the sand. This is just one of the many ways that Krissy is awesome!