Indiana Dunes National Park reopened Mount Baldy to the public on Monday.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently finished a month-long project to move about 27,000 tons of sand away from the parking lot and restroom facility. Mount Baldy was closed to the public to allow trucks to move safely through the site.
The rapid movement of sand, blowing over the top of the dune, put the restroom building in peril and threatened to cover even more of the parking lot if left unchecked.
Mount Baldy, once a Michigan City municipal park, is the national park’s most active dune.
Lacking vegetation to hold the sand in place, the wind pushes it over the top, swallowing trees and anything else in its path.
The sand trucked away from Mount Baldy was deposited at Crescent Beach to nourish beaches on the eastern edge of the park, including Mount Baldy itself. The pier in Michigan City’s Washington Park disturbs the natural flow of sand along the lakeshore, creating new land east of the pier but starving beaches to the west, an erosion problem repeated by other manmade structures that jut out into Lake Michigan.
Mount Baldy offers a trail through the woods that leads to a steep descent to the beach that seems even steeper when visitors head back to the parking lot.
The summit and southern face of the dune remain closed to the public out of safety concerns over unstable sand that could collapse.
When trees swallowed by the dune decompose, they can create an unstable void that collapses, creating a life-threatening situation.
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Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.