West Beach Trail

Trail #13 of the Indiana Dunes National Park 1966 Hiking Challenge is the West Beach 3-Loop Trail in Gary, Indiana. We first hiked this trail in the dead of winter in 2021 when we were new to the area and wanted to explore the trails. You can read our winter hike blog here: Hiking the Dunes in Sand and Snow. The West Beach trails have a unique history that sweeps through the sand dunes with the legacy of Alice Mabel Gray who left her career as a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Observatory in 1915 to live in a makeshift shack for almost a decade working as an ecologist to preserve the dunes. This free-spirited woman came to be known as “Diana of the Dunes” by the reporters who compared her to Diana, Goddess of the Hunt.

The West Beach Trail is a total of 3.5 miles with Loop 1 (Dune Succession): 0.9 miles that is also known as #DianaDunesDare, followed by Loop 2 (West Beach): 1.2 miles, and (Loop 3) Long Lake: 2.2 miles. The trail is marked as Easy-Moderate due to the flights of stairs and the steep elevation on the last mile of Long Lake dune.

The trail starts and ends at the parking lot where the land was flattened for sand mining in the 1920’s that was loaded onto railcars for construction purposes. Activists Dorothy Buell and Charlotte Read worked to preserve the rest of West Beach in its natural condition. We began our hike by walking along the beach in late evening, as a crowd of beach-goers trickled by as they slowly packed up their day in the sun. It wasn’t long before we were turning from the beachfront to embark on the first climb up the dunes.

The Dune Succession loop is one of my favorite scenic views in the Indiana Dunes. After walking the boardwalk through pine trees and oak-covered dunes, the top of the staircase is a jaw-dropping panorama of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline. I love hiking the staircases through this section!

At the bottom of the staircase, we turned left to continue on Loop 2 on a easy hike through loose sand in the prairie wrapping around Long Lake. It was a beautiful and calm evening and we clumped through the sand sharing stories from our recent NYC vacation.

Loop 3 took us through some rolling hills as we made our way on the winding route back to the beach. It got a little buggy in the woods as has been the trend on our other hikes this season so we quickly whipped out our face nets to keep the mayflies away. I think we actually preferred hiking this trail in the winter when the sand was more compact and we didn’t slide with each step. Overall, this trail was a refreshing hike for us to unwind after a long trip away from home.

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