April 14, 2013 – White Sands National Monument

The winds were slight this morning when we headed off to the White Sands National Monument.

First some background:

The dunes are located in the Tularosa Basin.  The gypsum that forms the white sand was deposited at the bottom of a shallow sea covering this area 250 million years ago.  Eventually turned into stone, these gypsum-bearing marine deposits were uplifted into a giant dome 70 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains formed.  Ten million years ago the center of this dome started to collapse, creating the Tularosa Basin.  The remaining sides of the original dome form the San Andres and Sacramento mountain ranges that now ring the Tularosa Basin.

With no outlet to the sea, water flowing into the Tularosa Basin sinks into the ground or pools up in low spots. One of the basin’s lowest points is the large playa, Lake Lucero.  This dry lake bed occasionally fills with water that then evaporates and deposits dissolved gypsum on the surface.  More gypsum deposition occurred in the last Ice Age when larger Lake Otero covered much of the basin.  The eroding mountains have now filled the Tularosa Basin 2000 feet deep with sediments, including the gypsum that forms its white sands (WOW!)

The common mineral gypsum, hydrous calcium sulfate, is rarely found as sand because it is soluble in water.  Rain and snow in the mountains dissove gypsum from the rocks and carry it into the Basin where it is trapped.  As it drys, it forms as selenite crystals.  Freezing and thawing and wetting and drying eventually break down the crystals as sand-size particles light enough to be moved by the wind.

The white sands dune field is an active dune field. The dunes move from west to east as much as thirty feet per year.  A few plants have adapted to avoid burial by moving sand.  The soap tree yucca elongates its stem to keep its leaves above the sand , growing upward a foot per year.  Some plants anchor parts of a dune with their roots and keep growing on a sand pedestal even after the dune moves on.

Yes, I copied most of that but I still have pictures.

We started our tour at the visitor center where we watched a movie on the creation of the dunes, toured the little museum, and spoke with the ranger about the dunes drive and the trails.  He did recommend that if the wind picks up, we do not take the trails.  So off we went.

 

The wind has started to pick up – notice the sand in the road way:

This is a sand pedestal.  This plant’s roots anchored in the sand.  This is what is left after the sands/dunes move on.

 

This was the first area for the boardwalk trail.  Winds were really picking up (notice the road covered) so we decided not to do any of the trails. 

Looks like snow, doesn’t it:

People were sledding down the dunes:

 

White out – Yikees:

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Almost looks like a glacier:

This is one of the soap tree yuccas.  Their stalk can go to over thirty feet down in the sand.  When the sand moves on, the stalk can no longer support the yucca so it collapses on itself.

A whale – :-)):

With the wind, the dunes seemed unreal.  If the wind dies down before we leave the area, we may try to get back.  If not, we will try again another time.  We did find out that they do tours to Lake Lucero once a month.  That is where some of the crystal beds are located and some of those crystals are up to three feet long.  So next time we will try to visit when they have the tour.

The wind continued to blow and lots of dust covered everything.  Here is some comparison shots:

Yesterday:

Today – notice the background:

Yesterday:

Today:

WOW!.  We did find out that April is New Mexico’s WINDY month.  We will put that in our memory banks for next time.

Since we had most of the afternoon free and could not do much outside, we decided to go to the movies.  We saw “Olympus Has Fallen”.   Great movie and worth seeing.

Until tomorrow – enjoy today.

Life is about using all the crayons in the box!