Hiking Backcountry Camping Trail

This is one of the most surreal two-mile walks you'll ever take. You step off the trailhead and immediately enter a landscape that looks more like another planet than southern New Mexico — rolling white gypsum dunes stretching to the horizon with the jagged San Andres Mountains as a backdrop. The trail is marked by orange posts, which you'll want to pay close attention to because every direction looks identical out here. You'll climb and descend dunes roughly four to five stories tall, which sounds modest until you're slogging through fine gypsum sand that swallows your feet with every step. Watch for bleached earless lizards skittering across the dunes and soaptree yuccas standing like sentinels. The payoff is pure immersion — you're standing in the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth with nothing but white sand and sky. This trail is perfect for photographers, sunset chasers, and anyone who wants to feel genuinely small.