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Sand Mountaineering

IN THE AMERICAN southwest, a happy combination of geology and weather has resulted in the formation not only of canyons and buttes but also of sand mountains that rise to a height of 750ft (230m) above their base and beg to be climbed.

That amount of ascent may sound trivial when compared to the elevation gain of a typical day’s hillwalking, yet sand mountaineering requires an inordinate amount of effort. Add to that a remote location, extreme heat and a wilderness environment, and it is no wonder that few people even attempt to reach the summits.

The Big Four sand mountains are found in Nevada, Colorado and California. Nevada’s 600ft Sand Mountain is a seif dune (‘seif’ is Arabic for ‘sword’), consisting of a single, snaking ridge that can be reached by a direct climb up one of the lateral walls. The other three are barchans (crescent-shaped dunes), or rather complex pyramids of barchans, one on top of another.

In Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes, two miles of sustained dune work is required to reach the highest sand mountain in North America – the 750ft Star Dune. In California, Kelso Dunes reach a height of 600ft, while Eureka Dunes rise to 700ft on the fringes of Death Valley.

Great Sand Dunes is America’s newest (2004) national park and is consequently the most popular of the Big Four sites but, for connoisseurs of sand mountaineering, Eureka Dunes brook no equal. They dominate the south end of the heat-blasted Eureka Valley, a great flat trench between the Last Chance Mountains and the Saline Range, which close in to trap the wind-blown sand. The nearest aid is 50 miles away, so this is no place to run out of gas or succumb to heatstroke.

The compactness of the 700ft sand mountain that forms the highpoint of the dunes gives it very steep slopes. This adds to its aesthetic appeal and makes it seem much higher than altitude measurements estimate it to be. It covers an area of only four square miles, but you can pack an awful lot of complexity into four square miles.

Viewed from the bottom, the three-dimensional maze of barchans rises to a distant sky-touching summit shimmering in the heat haze. Once into that maze, the clean geometric lines and planes formed by the ridges and faces of the barchans take on the mesmerising appearance of a Cubist masterpiece. Changing patterns of light and shade further add to the feeling of other-worldliness. Never did sand exhibit so many different golden hues, never did shadow contain so many shades of black, never did sky appear so richly blue.

All this made the route to the summit razorback (knife-edge ridge) surprisingly difficult to fathom. Sandi and I made good progress across the gentle lower barchans, but increasingly steep slopes, known as slipfaces, soon threatened to stop us in our tracks completely. The sand had the consistency of bottomless soft snow. Wind whipped it into whirlwind-like ‘sand devils’ that made keeping to our chosen line impossible. Sometimes the whole mountain seemed to shift beneath our feet, adding an extra layer of surrealness to the experience.

Every upward step disintegrated as soon as weight was transferred to it, making it necessary to leap rapidly upwards with the other foot to prevent all height gain being lost. Only by repeating this process ad infinitum was it possible to make any progress at all, in short, sharp, energy-sapping bursts that left our throats parched from hyperventilating in 50°C heat.

It was impossible to maintain any rhythm or even an upright posture. Regular time-outs were necessary to empty trainers overflowing with uncomfortable sand. In places, the only way to move onwards and upwards was to thrust fists into the sand for added purchase and climb on all fours. With sand temperatures of 60°C scorching our hands, this made the whole adventure even more radical.

Kelso Dunes summit ridge

Meanwhile, directly above us, so near yet so far, suspended on the skyline against that infinite blue sky, the summit razorback hung like a giant wave frozen in the breaking. Frozen? If only.

At one point, stranded on a particularly vertiginous slipface where every upward step simply deposited us back in the same place, the only possibility of further progress lay in a sideways, crablike traverse to the right-hand edge, in the hope of finding less steep ground beyond. By such zigzagging tactics, to say nothing of a determination that only hillwalkers intent on a summit would understand, we at last managed to reach the skyline… only to find that the actual highpoint lay a further couple of hundred metres away along the undulating summit ridge.

In the extreme heat, with diminishing water supplies (we had grossly underestimated the amount required), it was important now not to be drawn onwards beyond our physical limits. On the return trip those undulations would have to be negotiated again before a sand glissade down to the valley.

If the ground had been stable, the dips in the ridge would have seemed minimal, but the soft sand turned them into major obstacles, on a razorback that was as sharp as they come. The knife-edge crest demanded a technique akin to tightrope walking. As it disintegrated beneath our feet at every step, tumbles were unavoidable. As for the ascents out of the dips, minor though they were, they could be accomplished only by a pioneering climbing technique we developed and which I can only describe as rush-and-flail.

Was the effort worth it? You bet it was! Standing atop the furnace-like summit of Eureka Dunes Sand Mountain, with 360° of shimmering wilderness veiling infinite horizons all around, was one of those supreme moments out of time.