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| As Mount Baldy moves inland, it is consuming trees along the way. NPS photo. |
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| Mount Baldy Summit Trail and Beach Trail map. |
The 0.8-miles Mount Baldy Summit Trail can only be accessed on a ranger-led hike but is well worth the wait at the nation's newest national park. Times for the hour-long daytime and sunset treks on summer weekends are listed in the park's newspaper (The Singing Sands), the park’s website calendar, and its Facebook page.
To reach the trailhead, from Chicago head east or from Michigan City, Ind., go west on U.S. Hwy. 12. Turn north onto Rice Street; parking lots are at the road’s end. Try to find a spot in the first (westernmost) lot. From that lot's southwest corner, take the Beach Trail about 0.18 miles to a spur on the right/east side. Turn onto the spur and stop, waiting for the ranger-led hike to begin.
The 126-foot-tall sand dune on Lake Michigan’s southern shore is “living,” as it shifts about 4 feet every year. Whenever the prevailing northwest wind tops 7 mph, the beach sand moves.
Dying dune
Urbanization is slowly killing the sand dune, however. Thanks to a breakwall constructed decades ago for the Michigan City Harbor, the lake’s waves are taking away more beach sand than they bring in. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 1974 has brought in more than 85,000 cubic yards of sand to keep Mount Baldy alive.
Global warming also is starving the sand dune. The shorter and warmer winters decrease the amount of days shelf ice protects the shore from storm erosion.
Mount Baldy – and the other dunes at the national park – formed at the end of the last ice age when lakes of glacial meltwater dried up, leaving exposed sand. As currents and wind from Lake Michigan hit the shore at angles, the sand moves along the shoreline rather than erodes away. Once it reaches a stream, a sandbar forms, resulting in the formation of a small bay with a wide sand spit between it and Lake Michigan. Eventually the sand spit fills the bay’s opening to the open lake, and a dune ridge is created. Some dunes at the national park rise 200 feet above the beach between it and the lake.
Marram grass and later trees stabilize the dunes so that other than the sandy ground and steep climb over them, you’d never know you were walking on a dune.
Falling into chimneys
The national park has closed Mount Baldy for a couple of reasons. First, excessive walking across it has led to a loss of vegetation, so it’s no longer stable and threatens to move across the parking lots. Secondly, fungus-ridden black oaks buried by the dune are decomposing, creating deep holes known as chimneys that people can fall into. A few years ago, a young child slipped into one of these void spaces and was almost buried alive.
Ranger-led tours keep hikers on a path so they do not fall into chimneys or crush any returning vegetation.
The Mount Baldy hike begins with a scramble up steep, loose sand. Your path gains 55 feet elevation in very short order with a maximum grade of 13 percent. A rope can be used to pull yourself up the final stretch.
Views from atop the barren sand dune are incredible. Lake Michigan stretches across the northern horizon, and on a clear day to the northwest the downtown Chicago skyline is visible.
Those who don’t want to make the hike still can experience Mount Baldy through the beach. Just follow the Beach Trail north. The trail and beach curl east along the dune’s base. Marram grass and cottonwoods grow on the foredune.
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