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All tagged Dunes
Most “normal” sand dunes are made of grains of quartz and feldspar, but these are not your average dunes. Comprised of gypsum crystals (the mineral in drywall), these unusual white dunes sparkle under the desert sun. At over 200 square miles, White Sands is by far the largest of its kind in the world.
White Sands is the newest U.S. national park.
These massive dunes of red-tinted sand are a quite the geologic coincidence. It may not be terribly obvious to people who have spent time around “normal” quartz sand dunes that those in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park are not the same color, but they are. The pink hued sand here is fairly typical of northern Arizona and Southern Utah, but it is normally not collected into towering dunes.
Sand dunes of this size are usually associated with hot arid climates, but the temperature here in the Rockies hardly ever gets above 80degrees, and these dunes receive more than 40” of snow per year. From a distance the dunes seem tiny compared to the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind them, but up close these mounds of sand might as well be mountains themselves. Dunes can reach up to 750ft. above the valley floor and the park contains three mountain peaks that stand over thirteen thousand feet tall.
This is a park for hikers. The Natural Park Service has deliberately prevented development within the park, so there are only a few miles of paved roads within the park, and that’s just to get to trailheads or the visitors center. Towering over the Chihuahuan Desert, Guadalupe Peak is the highest point in Texas.
