Summary

The article recounts a personal experience exploring Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park, highlighting its unique landscape and the beauty of its aspens.

Abstract

The author shares their visit to Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park, describing it as an underrated gem with the tallest sand dunes in North America. They emphasize the park's grandeur, the challenge of hiking without trails due to the shifting sands, and the solitude found beyond the lower dunes. The trip also includes a visit to the Montville Nature Trail, particularly stunning during the aspen autumn foliage. The author reflects on the park's seasonal beauty and the joy of discovering new perspectives with each visit.

Opinions

The author finds Great Sand Dunes National Park equally magnificent as the more popular Rocky Mountain National Park.
They express a sense of intimidation upon first seeing the enormous dunes.
The author enjoys the freedom of choosing one's path while hiking on the dunes, likening it to the unpredictable journey of life.
They are impressed by the size of the crater-like hollows in the dunes.
The author takes pride in reaching a high point on the dunes, noting few people went higher.
Sandboarding and sledding are noted as popular activities in the park, which the author wishes to try in the future.
The Montville Nature Trail is highly recommended by the author, especially in the fall.
The author is captivated by the contrast of the golden aspen leaves against the blue sky and the calming effect of the quaking aspens.
They advocate for visiting national parks in different seasons to fully appreciate their unique beauty throughout the year.

Magnificent Dunes and Shimmering Aspens

Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park

Colorado is home to several stunning national parks. The most popular is undoubtedly Rocky Mountain, a park that I was fortunate to live near growing up. But one of their less-visited parks is in my opinion equally magnificent, and home to the tallest sand dunes in North America. Coincidentally, the last national park I visited on the shore of Lake Michigan also had sand dunes, but I knew that these would be much different — and not only because of their size.

For those of you keeping track, this is my 4th park on my way to hopefully visiting all 63. Previously, I have visited and written stories about Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Indiana Dunes.

After stopping by the visitor’s center to get my bearings and watch the park film (I always start with this if I can), I headed out onto the dunes. Looking up at them, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit intimidated by what I was setting out to do. You can’t really get a sense from the pictures of just how enormous they are. The only clue that I can give is that the teensy tiny dots that you can see in the photo below are people.

One of the unique things about hiking on the dunes is that there aren’t trails. The sand is constantly shifting and changing, and though footprints may linger for a little while they won’t be there for long. This makes for quite a fun challenge, as you get to choose your own path — though the journey from point A to point B that had looked easy from one dune crest sometimes turns out to be a lot more challenging than anticipated! It reminded me a little bit of life, where we often look for the most straightforward path towards our goals, but oftentimes it requires some ups and downs and turns that we hadn’t expected.

I loved seeing the amazing crater-like hollows in the dunes — again, there’s no way to properly describe how huge they were in person. By this point, I had passed the majority of hikers as they tend to stop when they reach the lower dunes, so there aren’t even people in this photo to help give a suggestion of size.

While I didn’t quite make it to the very topmost dune, I did get close. I was pretty proud of this, especially since I wasn’t quite acclimated to the elevation yet and I’ve been living close to sea level for quite a while now. As far as I could tell, there were only four or five people that day who made it higher on the dunes than I had.

I did see a couple of people who had reached the summit, though, and were then sandboarding down. Sandboarding and sledding are both popular activities in the park. I didn’t do that this time, but I’d love to in the future.

Besides hiking the dunes, I also hiked the Montville Nature Trail, which is an easy hike that I’d highly recommend — especially if you happen to be there in the fall. As much as I loved hiking on the sand dunes themselves, this might have been my favorite part of the park. I was incredibly lucky to be there at the peak season for the aspen autumn foliage.

I couldn’t get over the way the gold of the leaves stood out against the bright azure blue of the sky. When there was a breeze, the aspens would quake (hence their name, quaking aspens), causing the leaves to flutter and making a calming rustling sound.

Around every turn of the trail there was a new view, a new way the light shimmered across the gold of the aspens.

At the trail’s pinnacle, there was a beautiful view out towards the dunes over the aspens as well.

This trail in particular reminded me of the value of going to the national parks at different times of year. Each season brings something unique and beautiful to the landscape, and to truly know a park you need to return again and again. I certainly hope that will be the case with Great Sand Dunes.