Backpacking - Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota: May, 2007

Over Memorial Day I took a quick trip to the Black Hills National Forest with my college buddy, Scott, my co-worker, Tim, and Tim's wife, Rachel. We took along my lab, Huron, and Scott's dog, Max. We started the trip off with a bang, more specifically, a flat tire! We drove from Milwaukee to Palisades State Park in South Dakota the first day. Palisades is pretty scenic with some steep stone formations along Split Rock Creek. The campground is small and most of the sites are also small and uneven... but it's not bad for crashing overnight.

Before bed, we drove 15 minutes to Sioux Falls and found a Sears Auto Center to fix our bum tire. The next day we were back on the road with a spare again. That day we visited the Badlands National Park, driving the scenic loop that more-or-less parallels I90. We did some quick drive-by sight seeing and stopped to take a few pictures. Since I had last been to the Badlands (it has probably been 3 years or so) they have built some new boardwalks and added fossil displays along one of the nature trails.

Since you can’t drive across South Dakota without noticing approximately 75 million Wall Drug signs, we took a quick detour into Wall as we left the Badlands. We grabbed some lunch and made a quick visit to the classic Drug Store.

From there, we drove into the Black Hills and did some sightseeing at Mount Rushmore. To continue our whirlwind day of sightseeing we drove into Custer State Park through the pig-tail bridges and tunnels along US 16A. Custer is about the equivalent of a drive-through zoo; we immediately ran into a traffic jam of wild donkeys (an ass-jam as we fondly referred to it) and then took a tour of Custer’s 18 mile wildlife loop road. We spotted quite a few deer, antelope, turkeys, more donkeys, and some Bison (a permanent heard of 900 or so call Custer home).

We capped off the day with dinner at Custer’s Blue Bell Lodge and made camp at the North Stockade Lake Campground. We had paid for three sites, I was told while making reservations that only one tent was allowed per camp site. We seemed to be the only ones following that rule… I’m thinking I got some bad information on that one.

We got up the next morning to some frost and frozen dog water bowls. We took showers and packed our packs for the backpacking portion of the journey.

Breakfast was in buffet form at the Sylvan Lake Lodge. From there, we drove to the Iron Creek Horse Camp trail head (back in the Black Hills National Forest) making a quick stop at the Needles Eye area along the Needles Highway.

The hike on day one is about 8 tough miles starting on the Norbeck Trail. The trail is pretty decent with some short uphills until about mile three when entering the Black Elk Wilderness. From there, things start to climb. We eventually gained about 1600 feet as the Norbeck Trail turns onto the Cathedral Spires and Sylvan Lake trails for a short time. From there, I stayed behind with the gear and my stinky dog while the rest of the crew climbed the last mile (one way and 400 feet up) to Harney Peak. The peak has an abandoned fire lookout tower and at 7200 feet, some great views in all directions.

We got our packs back on when the group returned, and made a quad-burning mile hike down to water on the Grizzly Bear Creek trail to find a camp. If you have the extra energy after that day, there are better sites after about another mile with a short climb and more steep descents.

Day two was 5 miles of ups and downs continuing on the Grizzly Bear Creek Trail, heading North on the Horsethief Lake Trail, and finally heading back South on the Centennial Trail. We setup some spread-out camps along Grizzly Bear Creek where the Centennial Trail intersects the creek.

Day three started early and warm. Day one was in the 50’s, day three was hitting 75 by about 9 A.M. The final day is a relatively easy 4 – 5 miles with just a few short uphills and at one point, a decent view of Mt. Rushmore. It was tough keeping the dogs hydrated and cool, we took quite a few extra stops. I drained through 5 liters of water by the end of the trail.

Overall, it was a good hike. We shared the trails with quite a few horses and not many other hikers.

Nice and sweaty, we made our way back into Custer State Park and stopped at the Legion Lake Campground for a quick shower. We headed over to the State Game Lodge after that for a small lunch buffet; complete with some glorious bison stew!

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving back towards Sioux Falls to camp at the East Lake Vermillion Rec. Area. I’d recommend that park to anyone needing to stop over. Most sites are located right on the lake (which happened to have 30 or so pelicans swimming around the night we were there). We were the only campers that night. The dogs went for a swim in the sandy bottom lake and we sat around the fire checking out the pictures we had all taken over the last few days.

It was an uneventful drive home the next day and back to work the following day!

Pictures of the Trip

GPS Routes for the Hike

Google Earth File of the Hike