Lost After Dark in Great Sand Dunes National Park 😱

Have you ever noticed there’s something special about harrowing experiences? They’re super bonding (as long as they turn out ok in the end).

Our most recent scare was a new one- in all our years of hiking and exploring, we’ve never lost one of us before.

We had towed all day, found a campground super close to Great Sand Dunes National Park, and unhooked as fast as we could.

As we drove into the park at 7, we had about an hour before sunset.

The wind was really strong, blowing sand all over the place. I thought this was kinda neat, felt like we were in a movie or something.

It never crossed my mind that in an hour this epic windblown sand would be covering my son’s tracks, making it impossible for us to see where he had gone.

The kids took off, climbing and sliding and rolling down the dunes, having tons of fun. I tried to be a fun dad, but man was I exhausted in no time. These dunes were a LOT bigger than they looked from even a short walk away.

One of the best features of Great Sand Dunes National Park is that it’s a certified International Dark Sky Park. We love these. But on this night, that dark sky quickly became our worst enemy.

After playing for a while, the exertion started to take a toll on Gracie’s sugar. She split up with Ready and made her way back down to Joy, who texted to let me know that they were headed back toward the truck. The sun had just set anyway, so it was getting cold and dark, probably about time for all of us to head that way. I could see Ready start up the dune in the opposite direction, and with the wind, it was no use calling, so I followed.

He was just two dunes away from the highest sand dune in North America, and knowing how ambitious and how much of a stats and records junkie he was, I had a hunch he was aiming to stand on that dune before heading back.

When I finally crested the dune he had been on, I stopped to catch my breath, and could just barely see him standing with outstretched, celebratory arms on the ridge of the next (much bigger) dune. Then he disappeared.

I kept following his tracks- there were no other tracks up there, so there was no way to get them mixed up with anyone else’s. Plus they led pretty much straight to where he had disappeared.

It took me way too long, but eventually I did make it to the same place he had been- the dune just below Star Dune- but his tracks stopped abruptly at the top. The wind had already completely erased them.

There was no Ready, no tracks, and he had no flashlight or phone. I tried calling, but with the crazy wind up there, sound only traveled in one direction (back the way I had come from).

Trying to think rationally vs emotionally, it seemed most likely that he had either climbed the rest of the way up to Star Dune in the dark (probably not, since its outline was barely even visible), or walked around the top of this dune and headed back from a different point.

I circled the dune looking for tracks leading away, but the only part of the dune that wasn’t exposed to the strong wind was the section we had come up, so there were no tracks other than the ones leading up from that side. He definitely hadn’t come down that way.

Joy’s momma instincts were kicking in by now, and she was ready to do whatever it took to find our son, so she called the police.

A park ranger showed up after a little while, and filled out paperwork until we ended up finding Ready. Not sure this actually helped with the end goal, but it did help to distract Joy for a bit while the night continued to play out.

At this point some people who had been filming in the park offered to help, and turned on their set lighting, pointed toward the dunes to try to help Ready see where to come back to.

We never found out who these people were- they spoke very little English, but they were so kind.

There was just one problem- Ready wasn’t in the dunes.

He had found his way out of the dunes, but in a slightly different direction, so our paths were never going to cross.

He actually did a pretty good job getting his bearings in the dark- kept Alamosa on his right and ended up roughly a mile up the road from where we had parked, on the opposite side of the park visitor center.

When he got to the visitor center (which he thought from a distance was going to be a house), he did a lot of knocking on doors, but at that time of night, no one was there to help.

So he headed down the trail around back, which sounds like a winner, but it was still 4-5 hours before the moon would rise that night. This meant that it was a slow process of trying to follow the trail by what his feet felt. Every time he missed a turn, he ended up with anywhere from dozens to hundreds of those tiny prickly pear glochids (miniature spines) in his feet.

By the time he stumbled over a curb and back into the dunes parking lot, his feet were carrying well over a thousand of these tiny spines.

“There is no such thing as one glochid wound. If you have a glochid penetrate your skin, more than likely it has come with several hundred of its friends. Glochids detach with a slight breeze, work their way into your skin to what would be their hilt if they had hilts, and their shafts are barbed so that it’s harder to extract them than it should be.

“[They] hurt a lot more than their size would indicate, causing pangs from annoying to excruciating…”

– Chris Clarke, Environment Editor at PBS SoCal

It was a little after 10 pm when he finally caught a glimpse of our truck and limped back to his momma and the kind paperwork officer.

We spent nearly all night long picking spines out of his feet, and it was almost a week before he was able to gingerly “walk” again. To this day (almost two months later) I still see him grab the tweezers from time to time to work on another pesky little spine he’s discovered.

Interview with the victim hero

A week after this eventful national park experience, I sat down with our intrepid dark explorer for a couple of hours to pick his brain.

The following are a few interesting excerpts, as well as his parting advice for other young dune hikers.

What’s the moment that you remember the most from that evening?

Maybe when I got back to the parking lot.

What did you feel?

I felt pretty much relieved, that’s probably the main feeling I felt.

Did the park ranger cry?

No- I don’t know, he didn’t seem very excited or anything…he seemed like he knew they were gonna find me, 100%….

Yeah, it almost always turns out that the person shows up.

Right. Besides, I couldn’t really be gone longer than to morning, cause at first light I definitely would have found help.

So were you thinking that you might be out all night?

Honestly I really didn’t know. I thought I might make it back, but after a while, I was starting to feel a little less sure of getting back that night.

So had you started thinking about how you might spend the night?

I hadn’t, I was just trying to find people to get help. Or if I stumbled into y’all, that would be great too, but I was just looking for someone that might be able to help.

Do you mind if we back up to the very beginning?

So, I had been going up, and I wanted to make it to the 700 footers, I wanted to make it to the highest sand dune.

I kept seeing you occasionally, your red shirt, which was a great color.

The sun had maybe just set, but there was plenty of blue light. Anyway, so I made it up some really tough hills. Finally I made it up to this almost plateau like sand dune, you know what I mean.

Yeah that was the one I spent two hours on, haha.

Mmmhmm, and I was walking around it looking for you, I didn’t see you, I looked up and there was another TALLER- the thing is, you can’t see the taller ones until you’re to the top of what’s tallest to you.

So I was like, “Man!”, and I would’ve done it if you had been there, but all of a sudden I got a feeling that maybe your sugar was bad, and maybe I should turn back around and not make you climb all that ways.

So I was kinda at the edge of that plateau when I started my way down.

Anyway, I was going down cause I thought maybe you needed either help, or I just didn’t wanna make you do that if your sugar was bad, and you know sometimes you get feelings like each other might need- it’s cool how that…

My sugar was very bad- I was so sick. I wasn’t actually sure if I was gonna be ok- my chest was shooting pain besides my sugar, and I wasn’t sure whether I was gonna be all right or not.

You should tell your side of the story too, like a father’s…like the son’s being the main part and then you could like comment, not like “leave a comment”, but like comment at the end what you did.

You could leave like a skimmary of it- ha, that’s a great word- a skimmary!

Anyway, I was making it down the big sand dune, and as fun as it had seemed to come down, it was not. At certain points the sand got really hard, and I was going so fast I couldn’t really stop, and when I tried to stop it was like “Ouch, ouch, ouch!”, nothing like the thorns, but painful and hard! It’s weird how hard some of that sand was.

Anyway, so I was going down, and I never saw you.

So by then, I thought in my head, it’s the time of night where you see things that aren’t real. You know what I mean? Like, not hallucinating, but you like see a tree and think it’s a bear…you know what I mean? Your brain messes with you.

Anyway, I guess I went too far to the right. I didn’t think it was an emergency, I just thought I was heading down and I’d meet up with you, tell you we could go back, you know what I mean. I didn’t think it was gonna turn out the way it did.

I saw a light that I thought might be you…all together- it was pretty far away but I thought it was closer than it was, I guess.

I started calling after I had made it down a couple of big sand dunes, and the light kept disappearing- so I had to go in the direction I thought it was. And by this time I was scared.

Finally I made it down to the rocky part of the sand, which you know came right after the creek. But I made it to the rocky stuff without finding y’all, and I was like “No, no, no, no, no.” Cause now I was not happy- I was really scared.

So I just kept going. Finally I made it to the creek, and one thing that scared me crazy bad- the creek was bigger- I knew it was bigger than where we had crossed. So I knew it was a different place.

So I made it to the other side of the creek, and I looked both ways, so I went a little bit that way, and I was like, “No, I’m not gonna make it.”

Anyway, I decided I’ll go through these woods…there were trees, and I was weaving around trees, and I wasn’t stepping on thorns much now, but a little farther into it I started stepping on them occasionally, “Ow,” but as I kept going it was just ouch every step, and every step that wasn’t thorns was me stepping on my thorns.

Anyway, once I had made it out of the trees, which was a pretty small section, to the brushy thorns, I could see the visitor center lights, so that’s where I decided to go.

I kept going, every step crazy bad pain, I didn’t know how bad it really was, I thought it was as bad as the adrenaline made it feel. No, a lot worse. It didn’t feel like real pain- it hurt really bad but it didn’t feel real…it was so weird.

Finally, probably a little over halfway to the visitor center I found the trail, and I took that trail to the visitor center.

What was going through your head when you first realized you might be lost?

I was pretty scared, cause I had never been lost like that. Quite a few times in the past, I had, like for example in Walmart, thought like “Oh no, I’m lost!”, go down the next aisle, “She’s not there!”, go down the next aisle, “Oh whew, there she is.”

But the crazy thing is, man, how easy it is when you get lost in Walmart- JUST GO UP TO THE DESK!

But yeah, as I started to realize I might be lost, it was really scary, cause I had never been lost before. I kept not wanting to consider myself lost.

While I was in the sand dunes, when I first realized I might be lost, and didn’t want to acknowledge it, I figured if I do get lost, or if I really am lost, I can make it back to the truck…get the iPad, and text Momma…so I thought maybe if I was really lost I could do that. But what a fool! If I’m lost, I don’t know where the parking lot is. I thought, “Oh yeah, maybe worst case scenario I’m lost, and I have to go to the parking lot.” What? I walked right by that parking lot.

Ok, so when I made it to the sign [this was the sign out on the road a bit past the visitor center], I started feeling desperate…I just was like “Aggghhh”, cause I had no idea what to do, like I hadn’t seen any cars…so I didn’t go much farther than the sign before I noticed the lights.

I think I was standing right there to the sign…when I saw some more lights- but the change was, these lights were active. I could see lights moving, and so that made me know that that was help.

So at that point I was like, “No more walking through thorns”, so I took a step in to see if it was thorny, and it was. The first step off into the brush was thorny.

Anyway, so I took one step and I was like, “Nope, not doing that again.”

At this point, could you see my light up here?

So when I was by the creek I saw that light, and I felt so sick cause by that time I knew I was lost…finally after going a little bit that way I went through the trees, thorns, all that, until that “pulpit” sign.

Were your feet freezing, from the creek at night?

That was a little bit cold. Also the adrenaline, my feet were a little bit numb feeling I guess, but not that bad, mainly I could just feel the thorns, which really hurt. The adrenaline is what kept me going, cause if I hadn’t had that adrenaline the pain would’ve been too bad to keep going.

Anyway, I made it a little bit past that sign I guess, but I saw those lights, and they were moving, and I called again really loudly, and I thought I might’ve heard something in reply!

Yeah, they were calling your name- the film crew guys were out there calling- yup, I was calling from the top, and they were walking around with their phone lights besides having their big film lighting set up there.

Really? That’s so nice of them. I feel bad for them- after all they did, they didn’t find me…it would’ve been kinda nice if they could’ve found me for them…

Anyway, so I saw those lights and I thought I might’ve heard something in reply, but there was no way to be sure, at all. So I backtracked, which was kind of annoying to do- it annoyed my self even as I did it, cause I had gone all that way…a pretty good stretch.

Some of the time I was walking on my heels, most of the time I was walking on this heel and right here.

Oh, trying to pick the least painful?

Right. Anyway, so I turned back around and went back toward the visitor center.

I was going back, and I thought maybe the trail I had found would take me back to those lights- the moving lights. I thought maybe at the visitor center I could follow the trail, I thought maybe I had just stumbled upon it, maybe it really kept going, and it really was a long lasting trail.

Also I had seen a trail marker almost immediately when I stumbled onto it, so that made me think, “Well maybe it really does keep going”, cause a trail marker seems pretty good.

So I kept going down that dirt path, the dirt felt so good on my thorny feet after I’d been walking on the hard ground that really put the thorns in, you know what I mean? It felt great on my feet, so that was really nice.

I was imagining a lot of things- if I was found, if I wasn’t found, like if I got found that night and that kind of thing what I would do…

So I was going down that trail, and it took a while to get to those lights- it was pretty far.

Towards the end of it, I was getting off the trail a little bit- I was losing the trail- like I would go off and was like “OUCH, naw naw naw.” And I would backtrack a little bit to the trail.

Anyway, I kept re-finding the trail, cause it was pretty easy to find, but at one point I was just kinda wandering free, and I was getting kinda close to the parking lot but still trying to make it across that last part.

I could tell it was a police car by then, and I also saw that there was another car, which turned out to be our truck.

And at one point I found there were restrooms- men’s and women’s restrooms, and I wasn’t about to go in there for help cause I had made it that close.

And finally I stumbled over something which was probably a curb, and was out into the parking lot. I was going pretty fast then.

I didn’t want to call at that point, I didn’t know how to say it, cause I didn’t want to call right then for some reason, I wanted to get up closer, and I knew I had made it.

But as I got closer, it seemed like there were more than four bikes in the back of the truck, and that the truck was too long to be ours, and it wasn’t our car.

But there was police anyway, so I could have gotten help.

So I decided, ok, I’ll check the license plate. And I went around…and I was like “YES!”

She had a like beach towel wrapped around her cause it was pretty cold I guess, anyway, she like jumped out of the car, and as she jumped she was like holding the edges of her thing, so it looked like she had Pteranodon wings- I didn’t think it was Pteranodon wings- at all- but it looked a little bit like that.

She jumped out and it was something of the nature of like “He’s here!”

Was Momma crying?

I thought she had been crying but she wasn’t crying then, not as I could tell- she might have- it was kinda dark anyway, umm…I think she got a little dirt in her eye, but um…I’M KIDDING, I’m kidding.

What feelings did you feel when you realized that that license plate was ours?

I felt excited, I was just so excited to see y’all again, cause I had wanted to see y’all so bad. I was so excited to see y’all.

I showed them my thorns, the police car dude, um, national park guy dude, and Momma. The police car dude was like, “Oooohh” when he saw them, cause there were thorns everywhere. We didn’t know cause there were huge ones, we didn’t know that there were thousands more to come. We thought there were maybe like 50 or something, cause I mean that seemed like a ton, but they were all huge mainly.

So the police car dude said he was gonna go look in his car for tweezers, so he did, and he handed them to Momma, and Momma was pulling thorns out of my feet. It hurt, but there was still a little bit of adrenaline, so it wasn’t as bad as when we had to get the rest out.

Momma said I was as tough as nails, and he said “You’re as tough as a cactus”, cause she was pulling out cactus thorns.

I didn’t really know what he was thinking, but it seemed like he wanted to know a couple of things, like how it happened, how I had gotten all the way to the visitor center, I don’t know- he was a really hard guy to read.

He was definitely not like shocked happily at all, I think he might have said like “You ok, bud?” when I first came in, but he never seemed surprised in the least.

Why do you think that is?

I guess cause of what you said, there’s a bunch of false alarms that go on, and it’s so rare that when someone gets lost, he’s not found. Like, the only thing that could make you not be found is like if you died first- you’ve gotta get found at some point.

So what do you think you would have done if you never found us?

I don’t know, I probably would have stayed near the road hoping a car would come by- also I forgot one point- one part you really have to add, sorry.

When I was coming back around from the road, from the sign when I had seen the lights, I made it to the visitor center, and I heard this noise. It sounded kinda far off, and I was like, “What is that?” I dared to think it might be a car.

Anyway, so I didn’t know, but eventually I waited a little bit, and I knew it was a car when it was pretty close. So- I had all those thorns in my feet- I ran like mad for the road. I ran across the parking lot, and that’s like hard ground- I ran for the road, I made it to the texture change, and I could see the car. It had yellowish lights…it wasn’t a truck, it was just a car.

I made it to the texture change, and at that point I was waving my arms, anyway, the car went right by and I was just too late. The annoying thing was when I first heard it I had so much time, but I didn’t know what it was.

If the whole situation started again, at what point in the story would you change something, and what would you change?

I think I did my best going back down, but it was just a mistake. That was my part, but I couldn’t fix it really, it was just where I thought I should be going.

I think when I made it to the creek, go one way or the other…you have to at some point hit the parking lot, you have to, and you’ll know it.

I think at that point I didn’t realize it was gonna be such a big deal as it was.

I really don’t want to replay that section of my life, but I would like to see what would’ve happened- what would be the outcome- if I did a couple different things.

We do a LOT of national parks. Will this experience change how you think, or how you do national park visits in any way?

It will. It definitely will. When you asked me that, I envisioned like me going far from y’all, like wandering a little, and then I’m gonna be like “Oh- remember sand dunes?” And like hurrying back to Momma’s side or that kind of thing.

I’m not gonna remember it the whole time we’re at national parks. I’ll think of it a lot, but it won’t be on my mind 24/7.

I’ll probably never do exploring far from y’all- it’s changed.

Where does this one fall on your list of- is this now your least favorite national park? Or do you have some happy memories of it?

Well I actually think it’s really cool!

So I think the sand dunes- it’s named “Great Sand Dunes”, so it’s not supposed to be anything crazy, like the Utah parks…but I think it’s kind of epic, and I love the park because of that experience. I lost y’all, and walked on cactuses and that sort of thing, I really think its a really cool park because of that.

The point of this park is made- it’s sand dunes that you hike up and slide down or whatever- cool. It’s all it should be. But having gotten lost, and police getting involved, and me having to find my way back, and all that stuff, I think really made me like it a lot more.

That’s interesting. We got so many texts from people saying, “How’s he doing mentally,” people were just so worried about your trauma from the experience-

That’s- weird. I mean sure, it’s a little bit- it was scary, but honestly I kind of enjoy looking back on it. I still wince every time I think of stepping on those thorns, but it’s fun and I’m definitely not traumatized.

It was an experience I hope to never have again…but I think I’m kind of glad it happened.

If you had a friend who had had this experience, what do you think you would say to them?

I probably would say “good job”, I’m not trying to say I did a good job, but I think anyone who gets found on the same night they get lost has done a good job.

I also might mention how weird it is how when you first get lost, you think ok, worst case scenario, worst thing that’s really gonna happen is this- and then really, the worst case scenario you thought of is like the best case scenario in a couple of hours.

What advice might you give to other families or kids that might visit this park or parks in general?

It’s tough because I feel like my intention was the best you can do- go to the truck. No matter what happens (pretty much), the truck is the best option- cause it’s unlikely you’re gonna wander around the sand dunes and find someone.

So it’s hard to give advice, but I’d probably say: don’t drag- don’t make your visit to the park not fun by this, don’t like ruin it by this, but do kind of stay pretty close to your family, cause that stops anything ridiculous in the first place.

And definitely tell them your goal, like you could tell them, “I wanna hit those 700 foot sand dunes, wanna come?” Or just tell them you’re going to, then they can follow or they can tell you not to.

But definitely I wish that I had told y’all that I was gonna do that.

That’s really good. That’s like premium insider perspective.

And objective, too. Cause you’re still a kid, and you still wanna do fun things, and it’s still something you would not wanna skip experiences and stuff like that, that’s just really good advice from a kid.

Thanks!

Do you regret not hitting that last dune?

THAT’S a really hard question…but…I don’t think I do. Because if I had a feeling, like a true feeling, like your sugar’s gone bad, and I ignored that feeling, I would definitely be sad that I had done that and I would regret doing it.

Thank you for doing this! Thank you so much for being such a nice dad!

What’s the scariest thing that’s happened to your family on the road?