Region
Highlights
Routes
1 summit • 5.9 mi • 1,145 ft gain
1 summit • 8.0 mi • 1,011 ft gain • 5 hr 30 min
1 summit • 6.9 mi • 1,192 ft gain
Latest summits
"This was my first time going to Colorado. I hiked both of these dunes with my friend Michael.
This was a somewhat difficult hike due to the sand. Your feet are constantly sinking into the sand which makes progress slow. This slowness was compounded by the fact it was our first day at elevation after coming from sea level.
This is a fun hike. You can essentially take any path you want to the top. Once you've made it to the top of Star Dune, it is worth climbing to the top of High Dune. The views of the mountains are amazing.
At the top of the dunes, we noticed a storm coming from towards the mountains. We quickly made it down to a lower elevation, but still got caught in the rain. The rain was heavy and there was also decent-sized hail coming down. " — Noodles • Jun 2, 2021
"A failed expedition with a group of 6 to watch the sunset from Star Dune. First off, we should have listened to the advice to stay in the creek bed: we decided to try to cut closer to the base of the dunes, but did not anticipate there would be significant dunes in that path whose elevation was not noted in Google Maps! This delayed us for quite some time until we fled back out into the creek bed. At that point we had lost 30 minutes or so, but still might have had time to summit Star Dune a bit after sunset. At this point we made our second major mistake: rather than follow obvious footsteps from others trying to reach the dune, we tracked up the edge of the ridge that led towards the dune summit: or so we thought. After slogging along the sharp edge for 20 minutes, we made it to a summit, and realized we were not on the correct dune at all! If we were to continue on, it would be with a ~150 foot descent requiring us to regain more than 500 feet of elevation over a mile on sand: a task that just was not possible in reasonable time with the sun already at the horizon.
Overall, we did see a gorgeous sunset, and walked back underneath a rising near-full moon, but sadly did not mak..." — wazoheat • Sep 14, 2019