Kelso Dunes at Sunset

After turning off the pavement, you travel roughly three miles down the Kelso Dunes Road. It's a gravel road and will probably be washboarded, but it's nothing a passenger car can't handle.

From the trailhead, the dunes look like they're pretty far away, but a wide trail starts from the lot and leads right towards them. For the first half mile, the trail is mostly flat and gradually gets sandier and sandier. As you get farther from the road, the trail gets into some small dunes and has a few steep ups and downs. Finally the trails and vegetation disappear and you're free to roam over the sand dunes.

There's several high dunes and you can attack them however you wish. The easiest ways follow windblown ridge-lines to the summit, but if you really want a challenge, you can charge straight up the face of the dunes.

The dunes are a great place for sunset and light up with a golden color as the sun approaches the horizon. Going down is significantly faster than coming up, but it's still a good idea to bring headlights so you can make it back to your car after the sun goes down.

Sand can get over 140 degrees in the summer so don't attempt on hot days. Thunderstorms would also be a bad time to be on the dunes with the danger of lightning strikes.