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Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Rangers To Offer Tours Of Mount Baldy This Summer

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By NPT Staff - June 3rd, 2015
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Rangers will guide hikes up onto Mount Baldy at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore this summer/NPS file photo

The National Park Service will offer ranger-guided hikes on Mount Baldy this summer at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Indiana. The hikes will use a trail on the western edge of the dune that has been determined to be safe from holes.

Twenty-two guided hikes are scheduled on selected Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings between June 5 and September 6. The programs are free, but reservations are required to keep groups at a manageable size of no more than 30 people. To learn more about the hikes or to make reservations, call the visitor center'™s information desk at 219-395-1882.

Lakeshore visitors used to climb the dunes system on their own. But in July 2013 a 6-year-old boy was swallowed by a sink hole in Mount Baldy. The youth was rescued after being trapped for three-and-a-half hours. In 2014, ground-penetrating radar studies by the Environmental Protection Agency identified a large number of anomalies below the dune'™s surface, but analysis by scientists from the National Park Service, Indiana University and the Indiana Geological Survey has not yielded answers on how these holes form. 

All programs will meet at the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center. After a brief introduction, participants will follow the ranger to the Mount Baldy parking lot. During each one-hour hike, rangers will guide groups to a high point on the dune that overlooks the location where mysterious holes were first observed in July of 2013. Visitors will learn how scientists are continuing to work to unravel the mystery of Mount Baldy'™s holes and how park staff is restoring the native plants that used to grow on portions of the dune.

These programs will provide visitors with guided access to an area that has been closed to the public since the accident in 2013. All other portions of the 15,000 acres of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and the neighboring Indiana Dunes State Park remain fully open to the public. A decision on full public access to the approximately 100 acres of Mount Baldy that is closed will be determined following the completion of the scientific research sometime later this year.

 

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