Lace up your boots and head into Colorado's rugged Sangre de Cristo Mountains to explore this spine of soaring peaks that stand more than a mile above the San Luis and Wet Mountain Valleys. Here you'll discover plunging creeks, gorges cut from chunky conglomerate, and valleys where elk, bighorn sheep, coyote, and cougar live. Climb Kit Carson Mountain, Crestone Needle, or Blanca Peak; hike Black Canyon or Wild Cherry Creek. Wander the Great Sand Dunes National Park, which has the tallest dunes in North America. Local hiker and outdoor writer Lee Hart will introduce you to these trails and many more. Inside you'll find: up-to-date trail information; accurate directions to wilderness trails; difficulty ratings; topographic trail maps; zero-impact tips. Whether you are planning a day hike or an extended backpacking trip, you'll find trails suited to every ability and interest in one of the most beautiful regions of Colorado.

* Guidebook to hiking, biking, or climbing in the stunning Sangre de Cristo Mountains. * Details unlimited recreational opportunities for the park's 225,000 annual visitors * 210 color photographs and 40 color maps * Color-coded tabs and activity symbols for quick reference Nowhere else in North America do alpine tundra, tall forests of evergreen and aspen, and massive desert dunes meet so dramatically as in our nation's newest crown jewel. This book is the essential guide to one of the nation's newest national parks. Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve earned this status in 2003, and became an instant treasure both for Coloradans and vacationers everywhere.

This hiking guide to the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness offers more than 70 hikes to explore the length of the range. Additional information on geology, history, and wildlife round out this superb guidebook.

Wolf (Southwest studies, Colorado College; Society of American Foresters) shows how the Sangre de Cristo Mountains' recent Wilderness designation may weaken links between their ecology and the economies of the surrounding human communities. He examines the environmental history of the Sangres' large

This guide is a comprehensive guide for all the peaks over 13,000' in the Colorado Sangre de Cristo Mountains. With varying ascents from hikes, scrambles, snow climbs, and technical routes, there are plenty of options for anyone who wishes to seek alpine adventure.

Describes in detail 99 Colorado trails where snowmobiles are forbidden by state or federal regulation or where the terrain makes snowmobiling simply not worth the effort. If you have ever had the sound and exhaust of a snowmobile interrupt your cross-country skiing or snowshoeing, this is the guidebook for you.

Sculpted into graceful contours by countless centuries of wind and water, the Great Sand Dunes sprawl along the eastern fringes of the vast San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado. Covering an area of nearly thirty square miles, they are the tallest aeolian, or wind-produced, dunes in North America, towering 750 feet above the valley floor. With the addition of the enormous Baca Ranch and other adjacent lands, the dunes—originally designated as a National Monument in 1932—attained official National Park status in 2004. In Sea of Sand, Michael M. Geary guides readers on a historical journey through this unique ecosystem, which includes an array of natural and cultural wonders, from the main dunefield and verdant wetlands to the summits of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Described by explorer Zebulon Pike as “a sea in a storm” and by frontier photographer William Henry Jackson as “a curious and very singular phase of nature’s freak,” the Great Sand Dunes are a nexus of more than 10,000 years of human history, from Paleolithic big-game hunters to nomadic Native Americans, from Spanish conquistadores and transcontinental explorers to hard-rock miners and modern-day tourists in motor homes. Like these successive waves of visitors, Sea of Sand follows the water, analyzing its critical role in the settlement and development of the region. Geary also describes the profound impact that waves of human use and settlement have had on the land—which ultimately inspired the early grassroots efforts by San Luis Valley citizens to protect the dunes from further exploitation. He examines as well the more recent legislative effort led by an unprecedented coalition of local, state, and federal agencies and organizations, including The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service, to secure the Great Sand Dunes’ national park designation. Amply illustrated, Sea of Sand is the definitive history of the natural, cultural, and political forces that helped shape this incomparable landscape.