Garden of the Gods is a park right outside Colorado Springs. It's an area of red sandstone where the layers were turned on end, making big fins.
Garden of the Gods is a park right outside Colorado Springs. It's an area of red sandstone where the layers were turned on end, making big fins.
Given that pregnant women aren't supposed to exert themselves at altitude, we figured we weren't going to climb a 14er this year, but Pike's Peak has a road all the way to to top, so we drove up and walked around very slowly, enjoying the view.
Nancy and I on Pike's Peak. Thanks for taking the picture, Bruce!
After coming back down from Pike's Peak, we drove over to Great Sand Dunes National Park. We took the back way in, following a jeep trail over Medano Pass. Once you get to the park, the road has sections of deep sand which are tricky to pass. We deflated the tires to get better traction (more area on the sand?), but there were still a few times we almost got stuck. Some others weren't so lucky. We helped a pickup pulling a trailer get out of a sand pit and turned around to go back out, and pushed a Subaru Outback out of a soft area (both drivers were very apologetic, but we thought it was great fun figuring out how to get them traction). The picture above is our first view of a dune.
Some deer near the dunes.
Dead trees at a picnic area.
Medano Creek flows around the east side of the dunes. Because the Sangre de Cristo mountains received very little snow this year, the creek was at very low levels. Late June is usually peak flow.
The dunes with Mount Herard behind. Note the lack of snow -- usually there's snow on the peak well into July, if not August.
We came back the next day around noon to do a hike in a shady canyon east of the park.
Here's a view of the main parking area with High Dune behind. High dune rises 650 feet above Medano Creek. For scale, the black specks are people.
This picture was taken as we climbed High Dune at sunset.
A view of the dunes from High Dune.
Nancy climbing up High Dune. We went up very slowly, one step at a time, so as to avoid letting Nancy get out of breath.
Nancy and me on top of High Dune.
Nancy on High Dune.
Preg-Nancy in the sand dunes.
We stayed on High Dune as the sun set.
We descended with pink sunset clouds overhead. The way down was a lot easier than the way up -- we walked straight down the steepest slopes, sliding several feet with each footstep. Our feet made funny noises as the sand deformed around them. After the glissade from Castle Peak in 2009, this was my favorite descent from a climb.
Nancy and Sadie.
Sadie was happy to get out and run around in the open.
