Eureka Dunes is located in the Northern tip of Death Valley National Park in the State of California.

This is a quite the remote location if you are coming from the Las vegas or the east.  The Road to Ubehebe crater is open which has a fork in the road that goes into a graded dirt road.

This graded road is 45 miles of deep grades, washes and sand.  It is Subaru friendly but it will take a bit of a rattle from the grades in the roads. 

There was a point on the road where we got some air time from a illusionary bump in the road.

Once you get to the top of the range and to the mine, the road turns into a paved road all the way down into the valley but once you get tot eh turn off to Eureka Dunes, the road goes back to washed out divots and rocky road.

We could see the dunes in the distance once we got onto the final stretch and after 10 more miles of dirt road, we made it to the dunes.

We packed up and headed to the top of the highest dune in Eureka Valley, which is also the highest dune in the State of California.

The last pitch was a bit of a smoker and very steep for the approach that we took. We took two steps forward and slid down over a step, so it was slow going.

As we worked up to the top the sand would slide down and we could hear the vibration sounds that that has made these dunes popular. The water that is contained inside the dunes reflects noise vibrations from the rolling sand and creates a low humming noise.

We set up at the top of the dunes and watched the sunset.  There were more people in this area than we expected and we noticed some people making the attempt to get to the top but stopped midway.

The winds blew the shifting sands and covered our tracks just hours after we made them and the sun set a beautiful color in the sky that reflected off of the range behind us.

There are a bunch of canyons int eh range but we did not go to check them out due to the time that we had. We ended up leaving the following day and headed west towards the sierras which made for better roads and the preferred way for people to visit these dunes.

This was quite the trek to get out here but it was worth the run in the car.


Make sure you bring a lot of extra gasoline as there is nothing out there and not the place to get stuck, especially if you are coming from the east.