White dunes
Like snow.
Charles & Maggie Boyer — CC BY 2.0 · Jennifer Willbur — CC BY 2.5 · Gleb Tarro — CC BY-SA 3.0 · John Fowler from Placitas, NM, USA — CC BY 2.0 · Shardon12 — CC BY-SA 4.0
White Sands National Park is a park in New Mexico in the southwestern United States, in the Tularosa Basin, about 36 km southwest of Alamogordo in a straight line. It covers about 590 square kilometres, including the southern part of a field of white sand dunes made of gypsum crystals. This gypsum dunefield is the largest of its kind on Earth, about nine metres deep, with dunes up to 18 metres tall. Around 12,000 years ago the basin held large lakes, streams and grasslands; rain and snowmelt dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains and carried it into the basin, and as the lakes dried, selenite crystals formed, which the wind broke up and carried east. The process still continues today. Several animal species in the park are white or off-white, and it was first protected as a national monument in 1933. Soft white dunes stretch to the horizon like snow, dotted with green yucca, under distant blue mountains. At sunset the sand turns pink and violet. Visitors walk trails among the dunes, slide down the slopes on sleds and stay for sunset. Carry plenty of water, as there is no shade on the dunes.
Like snow.
Pink and violet.
On the sand.
Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, United States
Plenty of water.
At sunset.