BRUNEAU, Idaho -- If you stand at the top of North America's tallest sand dune, you're perched on a structure higher than the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
Looking down, the dune's spine snakes along a saddle to a smaller dune to the east. On the ridge, the wind quickly makes smooth the trail made by footprints. Small rivers of tiny grains flow down the slope, sent sliding by boots or bare feet.The dunes were formed about 15,000 years ago out of sand that gathered in the natural basin called Eagle Cove along the Snake River. The sand and the cove were the results of the great flow of water during the flood that drained ancient Lake Bonneville through the Snake River Canyon.
Once the flood subsided, the area's consistent winds were left to do their work, maintaining the dunes' shape.
Looking farther out, you see the Snake River and a wind-shaped landscape between. There's a lake at the dune's base. The whole scene is enclosed in a semicircle of plateaus that made Bruneau Dunes State Park possible.
The big dune at Bruneau Dunes sweeps 470 feet above a lake at its base. The Great Pyramid was originally 481 feet tall but now rises 450 feet. The dune resembles a pyramid, the winds blowing it to a peak whose sides shear off steeply in several directions.
Like the pyramid, the sand dune is a typical symbol of the desert. The barren silence and smooth contours make an atmosphere different from the sagebrush land all around. Instead of grazing cattle and hard lava rock, the scene is more evocative of caravans, palm trees and mirages.
The area at the bottom of the dunes contrasts the starkness of the dunes themselves. It's an oasis, complete with lakes and ponds, trees, marshes, cool breezes and wildflowers in the spring.
The lakes haven't always been part of the area. They developed in the 1950s, most likely thanks to a higher water table caused by irrigation projects on the Snake River.
The water makes a refuge for an abundance of wildlife, which includes typical desert dwellers such as lizards, snakes, jackrabbits and coyotes, along with more surprising residents such as ducks, geese and other waterfowl.
From a picnic spot at the lake, explorers can go in a few different directions. They can visit one of the smaller dunes along the road that took them in. These are smaller than the 600-acre mass that makes up the main dunes, but they still make vigorous climbs.
These smaller dunes are popular with sliders. Young and old alike cruise the sand on anything slick, from plastic sled discs to boards, shreds of cardboard boxes, modified snowboards and even skis.
Those who want to head straight for the big sand can follow a path that rambles around marshes, through glades and over the brushy and grassy mounds at the foot of the dunes.
Once around the lake, the trail more or less disappears and it's a steep and laborious sprint to the top.