Location:
This sea of sand abuts the northernSea of Cortez near the Colorado River Delta, in the northwest corner of the state of Sonora, Mexico.
Forecast: Searing heat and gale-force winds govern this slice of the Sonoran Desert. In the summer, temperatures regularly soar over 120°F and are often coupled with violent winds. In the winter, nortes (north winds) can rage for weeks, raking the sandy landscape with continuous 50 mph winds, punctuated by deafening, balance-defying gusts. Lore has it that the nortes are so powerful that sand is forced into everything—including unopened canned goods.
Inside Knowledge: The sandstorms of the Altar Desertand the true-life battle to push a railroad through this unforgiving realm was the inspiration for the 1965 Mexican movie Viento Negro (directed by Servando González), considered one of the great classics of this country’s cinematic history. To this day, workers continually battle the elements tokeep the Baja-Sonora Railroad, theonly transportation conduit that traverses the area, passable.
Synopsis: A labyrinth of ever-changing dune forms, the Altar Desert is intimately tied to the weather, as each passing windstorm leaves a slightly different landscape in its wake. Home to the largest dune field in North America, the desolate Altar is defined by thousands of square miles of captivating and ever changing wind-sculpted sand, ridges, star dunes, barchans, and other aeolian formations. Some of the dunes in the heart of the desert rise over 600 feet. The region was named by missionary Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, after a small mountain that he thought resembled a religious altar.
In July 1937, four young engineers journeyed into the desert wilds of northwest Sonora, Mexico. Their mission: to survey a piece of land as a potential corridor for a railroad line that would connect mainland Mexico with the spindly Baja California Peninsula. The landscape was more unforgiving than imagined; the four men were never seen alive again.
A land molded by the hands of fickle, explosive gales, the Altar is as beautiful as it is forbidding—a massive wilderness of sand, accentuated by torrid heat. The story of the Altar begins a thousand miles to the north, at the source of the Colorado River in the highest reaches of the Rocky Mountains. As the Colorado roars toward lower ground, it plucks and carries away sediment of all sizes and types in its roiling waters, from house-sized granite boulders to near-microscopic particulates of chiseled volcanic earth. By the time this river arrives at its terminus—the northern waters of the Sea of Cortez—the now slow-flowing Colorado is dense with a medley of ground-up western North America. Deposited along the shore, the Colorado’s sediment is not at rest for long, as the region’s predominant westerly winds drive the alluvium into the heart of the Gran Desierto. Inside the Altar, winds from all points of the compass swirl, build up, tear down, and reshape the land—a superlative specimen of sky-earth interaction.
ED DARACK is a freelance writer/photographer; visit his websitewww.darack.com
