Medano Pass
Medano Pass was the second and last trail for the day. We had to wait for 15 minutes at the gate at the Great Sand Dunes park entrance as they were very busy. After getting through the entrance gate, we went to a parking lot to air down again.
We stopped at the Sand Pit rest/picnic area near the start of Medano Pass for a bathroom break and to take some pictures of the dunes and people crawling like ants all over it!
There were warning signs everywhere saying that you needed a four-wheel drive vehicle with high clearance to drive on up Medano Pass, but it turned out they really needed to place some signs on the Westcliffe side of the pass!
Medano Pass did have a lot of traffic on the trail. We passed through many water crossings, and water and lush vegetation were everywhere. We did not have any issues with the water crossings.
We passed a few groups of Jeeps and trucks as we made our way down Medano Pass.
After about 20 minutes or so on the trail, we ran into a person walking down the trail towards us. He did not look like a hiker, he had no gear, and didn't appear dressed for a hike. The man stopped us and asked if we could help get him out of the mud a few hundred feet up the trail.
We helped him out, as he was stuck in the middle of the trail in a deeper muddy area. We couldn't have passed him in any case. Matt winched the Ford truck out of the mud hole and the many people in and on the truck were very grateful. We didn’t have any issues with the mud hole.
During the rest of the Medano Pass trail we ran into a few more groups of people driving down the trail toward the National Park. Some of the trucks had their beds full of people. One Jeep Cherokee had a top car carrier with people riding in it, and none of them looked particularly well equipped to handle the difficult trail conditions.
At the end of Medano Pass we took the dirt road to the end and aired back up. At was a great day of four-wheeling.
Reports from Other Days: 4
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Medano Pass. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
