SURVIVING A NIGHT IN AMERICA'S LARGEST SAND DUNES (crazy sand storm)

[Music] wow it's very rare that bears and mountain lions make their way into the sand dunes 300 yards from where we slept last night and look at this cat tracks i think that has to be a mountain lion before we get started we wanted to let you know that we are partnering with omaze to give away a customized sprinter van there will be more details later in the video but if you can't wait anymore just go to omaze.com forward slash carrot [Music] we're karen nate and we spent the last four years traveling to 100 countries but 2020 brought us back to the u.s where we bought a converted sprinter van to explore our home country yay we started the summer by driving 1400 miles across the country to colorado and five weeks later we are still here we cannot get enough of this beautiful stay in its endless adventures i can't believe it one of our favorite things about having a home on wheels is finding beautiful and unique places to stay but tonight we're saying goodbye to the van and getting a little uncomfortable for a once in a lifetime experience so oh a little cold at 8 000 feet this morning so we are about 20 minutes outside of great sand dunes national park and the visitor center is about to open we're gonna try to be one of the first ones there because every day they give out a limited number of back country permits that allow you to go sleep in the sand dunes they're first come first serve so [Music] great thank you so much [Music] can you tell how big i'm smiling underneath this buff we got the permit tonight we are sleeping in the dunes i think this is gonna be one of the most unique experiences we've ever had the only issue now is uh we don't attempt [Music] so it turned out finding a tent was a lot harder than i thought it was gonna be we ended up driving 45 minutes to the nearest town we went to two sporting goods stores two walmarts and no one had backpacking tents walmart had shelves on top of shelves that should have had tents on them but the only thing left were the this stakes a tent this is a tent so we've come up with another solution that i actually think is gonna be more fun but we'll share that with you tonight when we set up camp so we have enough stuff to like be safe but we don't actually have backpacking stuff this uh sleeping bag was just kind of like our backup plan in case it got really cold in the van and now i'm just looking oh man it's just not gonna be comfortable to carry out there i don't [Music] know right so the plan is to hike four miles into these massive sand dunes because somewhere in this vastness lies the tallest sand dune in all of north america so the goal is to camp somewhere nearby tonight so we can sit on top and watch the sunset we have a long journey to get there though with that said we have heard that this is a very strenuous hike normally i wouldn't be worried about anything that's eight miles round trip but we have four miles through nothing but sand and we start by climbing this gigantic i feel like that does no justice to how big this thing actually is i'm already out of breath and we're not even into the incline yet we're walking on flat sand right now we are at 8 000 feet so we're breathing hard we'll play a bit on that yeah so about this giveaway we are super excited to be partnering with omaze to raise money for an awesome cause if you've never heard of omes before they partner with celebrities and sometimes people like us who live in a van and they do these awesome giveaways to raise money for charity they're giving us the opportunity to give you the chance to win a 4x4 mercedes sprinter van plus 60 000 worth of customizations by van smith this band is way nicer than ours it's a 4x4 so you can get to some epic places that we can't even get to in our van and you get a say in the customizations and all of the work is done by the professionals at van smith and not nate i did not think that was gonna happen and whoever wins has the option of having the van delivered or they'll fly you out to the van smith's shop in colorado and you can road trip back we highly recommend that option because van life in colorado is absolutely incredible so if you go to omaze.com forward slash karen nate and you donate ten dollars you're entered for a chance to win and you'll be supporting an awesome organization called access fund whose mission is to protect public lands restore climbing routes and repair impacted trails which is all more important than ever given how many people are spending time outdoors this [Music] summer [Music] okay i think it's a little less windy i'm going to attempt to tell you a story while climbing the sand dune this actually isn't karen and i's first time here we were here six years ago before we ever started this youtube channel we were at a wedding in new mexico and we drove up here for the day to go sandboarding and i believe it was the first time we ever filmed edited and published a video to youtube [Music] i tried to get really creative and in the first half make it look like we were really good and then reveal all of our crashes in the second half this is cool to be able to look back on a moment when we're standing in the exact same place and realize just how much we've changed how much our lives have changed and knowing that if we would have never just started doing that for fun like filming our travels not for anybody to watch but just to have them as memories we would have never gotten to this point and even though i'm breathing really hard and i'm really hot just feeling so grateful right now i don't remember being this tired last time i think these things have grown i think we've officially conquered the hardest part of this hike first mile and a half is basically straight up to the top of this dude which is appropriately named hi dude so if you're standing in the parking lot and looking out this one looks like it's the tallest but it's not we still have two and a half miles to go so if you look like right when everything starts to turn green that's the parking lot we came from and all the little black dots you see out there those are people [Music] this is crazy dude [Music] as it turned out this challenge was nowhere close to being over i think we were the only ones crazy enough to venture past the first set of dunes because we walked for the rest of the day without seeing another soul due to the shifting sands there's no set trail so we did our best to find the path of least resistance through the dunes but what looked like gentle rolling hills in the distance turned out to be incredibly steep giant mountains of sand several of them became too steep to climb so we ended up having to navigate our way across the side of them it took an insane amount of effort just to keep myself from sliding down the dunes as my boots slid in the sand every single step only took me half as far as i hoped to go [Music] the unrelenting afternoon wind only compounded my discomfort it filled my eyes mouth and ears with sand my eyes burned to the point where i could barely keep them open and i could feel sand crunching between my teeth so while my legs ached and all i wanted to do was sit down there was another part of me that wanted to find relief from the wind as soon and as fast as possible good work i don't know what i would have done if i didn't have your footsteps to follow oh the only thing that i was focusing on oh my gosh this may sound like a miserable experience and in some ways it was but there was also beauty and excitement in it a rough rugged excitement that came from pushing ourselves through something uncomfortable [Music] in a beauty of experiencing such an extreme environment that was slightly out of our control [Music] all right this is the final push to the summit of the tallest sand dunes [Music] ah the peak oh the first mile and a half was not the hardest part but wow we did it we made it i didn't think we can make it your face is proud of you once again keep surprising me well we forgot our normal celebratory stickers but we it doesn't feel the same though also we cannot see anyone in any direction that we look right now we are the only ones up here and it feels like we're the only ones in all of the sand dunes [Music] wind's picking back up we're gonna see if we can head down try to find somewhere to camp for the night it's raining still super windy it's already starting to get a little chilly we're at 8 000 feet and i don't really think we're prepared to spend the night in these conditions as much as i really really want to spend the night out here as much as i really really feel like i'm letting you down i think we're gonna be heading back to the van watched our past videos [Music] i wanted to make smart decisions maybe i'm lighting [Music] wow [Music] it's uh it's about 10 minutes later perfectly blue skies we're already dry we found this nice beautiful spot out of the wind and i think this is home for the night maybe i haven't learned my lesson after all with that said we just we went through worst case scenario and that's that it rains on us tonight we have a pretty miserable night and we have to pack everything up and hike out in the dark which is pretty straightforward from here way less scary than long's peak in the dark not ideal but like i also think something that shouldn't stop us from having this experience [Music] okay so nate bought this emergency shelter at walmart and [Music] perfect and the plan was to sleep in it like a cocoon kind of like the bivvy bags that we slept on a glacier inn in antarctica we figured if a bivvy was good enough for antarctica it was probably good enough for the sand dunes too problem is it's quite loud which isn't a huge deal but technically we are in the quietest location in all of the lower 48 united states so it would just be such a shame if this is what we heard all night instead of the complete silence also you kind of look like a burrito so the plan is to sleep with it like a ground cover we're going to stuff it underneath the sleeping bag so we don't have to hear it all night but we know that if it rains we can we can cover ourselves up and we'll have some shelter i think this is going to be great i'm not saying i'm going to sleep good the sand's a lot harder than i thought it was going to be i thought it was going to be at the beach but more like laying on a piece of plywood but it doesn't really matter if we sleep that's not the point this is gonna be a very memorable experience so we're eating dinner a good ways away from where we're sleeping tonight because this morning when i went to get the permit the ranger said it's very rare that bears and mountain lions make their way into the sand dunes but just to be safe we're eating far away from our camp and we're storing our food far away from our camp dinner tonight consisted of triscuits and a bag of beef jerky we had brought tuna fish and crackers thinking that was like a nice easy backpacking meal and then as soon as i went to open it i was like what do cats eat fish what do bears eat fish and i got too scared to open it and i just thought it was the perfect to-go meal how much better are you gonna sleep tonight knowing that your hands don't smell like the predator's favorite food this is not much of a pillow it's nice and quiet the wind is relatively calm the temperature is perfect for getting in a sleeping bag the stars are just starting to come out and so far i'm very happy with the decision that we've made with that said there's a chance this will be the worst night of sleep that i've ever had the sand is surprisingly hard wishes look good ah [Music] the ground is so hard didn't rain but the tickets so cold and there were these little bugs that kept landing on my face so i swept most of the night like this and then i had to sleep on my side until it started hurting then i moved to my back and then it was still hurting i moved to my other side and i think i just did that like hundreds of times [Music] what are you doing i'm just getting the knife out just in case i'm scared 300 yards from where we slept last night and look at this cat tracks the back pad the toes [Music] and look that's like i think that has to be a mountain lion there's no way we would have slept out here last night if i would have seen these before we went to sleep the good news is i feel like it would be pretty challenging to to stalk us in wide open sand but either way i'm carrying the camera on one hand and a knife in the other just for scale anybody know what kind of tracks these are they go in twos they're about a normal human's [Music] [Music] step ice cold water oh my gosh i don't know if i can do it you gotta do it no you gotta do it all right yeah i just got to go in iceman [Music] oh my gosh you've only got to do this about 10 times longer let's take my breath away oh my head oh my god oh it was almost gone forever it almost went out there i literally can't open my eyes look how much sand is just caked everywhere i think just as bad as mine but i guess just been trying after bravo i just fell it didn't hurt too bad just glad i didn't roll all the way down you look so epic yeah probably what probably i think it's worth trying we made it i made the coffee this morning we slept in the middle of the sand dunes all alone with all of the sand flies on this freezing cold hard ground let me that'd be the right word for it last night we rolled around inside of a sleeping bag on the sand it was worth it [Music] [Music] before you go don't forget to check out the link in the description it's omaze.com forward slash kara nate for your chance to win the customized 4x4 sprinter you

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 1,798,361

Keywords: van life, travel, travel vlog, great sand dunes national park, colorado travel, living in a van, tiny home, kara and nate, travel couple, couple vlog, converted sprinter van, solo camping, overnight challenge

Id: khRBffkldcM

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/darthrio]

Those prints where more likely bobcat prints, too small to be mountain lion.

[u/CardboardSoyuz]

K&N have been a lot of our quarantine viewing at home -- we found them about 2 months ago and still have a fair amount of content to get through -- but they need to spend more time on their locations and a bit less about them. I find them both charming, mind you, but they haven't yet found their footing on how to explore America as a visitor. "Oh, look, we're here" instead of trying to give some background on where they are -- which they were quite good at while overseas. They'll find their voice, but this stuff hasn't been great yet.

[u/Ro6t]

This was a pretty daring adventure. The fact that they slept in the middle of nowhere was scary. It’s good to see even after 4 years, the couple have not lost their ability to explore and seek risky experiences. This is what makes Kara and Nate so much fun to watch.

[u/NeptuneOW]

“Hi were Kara and Nate” is so annoying. It’s every single video. We already know that information. If you really wanna give new viewers background information just tell them to watch the latest video.

[u/stormyv]

I do fast forward it. Doesn’t make me dislike it any less. Interrupts the continuity of enjoying shows to have to skip repetitive annoying pointless intros.