Not
long after I moved to the Black Hills in 1987 I got interested in exploring
some of the other nearby outdoor areas. There were plenty of great place both in
the Black Hills (the Bearlodge Mountains, Devils Tower, Jewel Cave, and Wind
Cave), and close enough for weekend trips (the Bighorns and Theodore Roosevelt
National Park). But one of my first trips was to Badlands National Park, about
two hours away.
Rainbow (now Conata Basin) Overlook in Feb., 1986
Badlands
is an unusual park. Its huge, almost 250,000 acres, but has almost no hiking
trails. The park has three units, two of which are very rarely visited. Almost
all visitors stick to SD 240. the park’s scenic road. Most of those simply stop
at an overlook or two, go into the visitors center, and then drive on through.
The park has five short interpretive trails, but only one decent length trail hike,
the Castle-Medicine Root Loop.
1981 version of the Castle Trail map (without Medicine Root Trail).
On
my first trip to Badlands, I went with my friends Craig and Eric from work. We
hiked out and back on the Castle Trail with 11 miles of easy walking skirting
the northern edge of the Badlands Wall (The Medicine Root Trail wouldn’t be
opened until 1989.) Getting a taste of the badlands without having to navigate
through them. It was a good day for wildlife watching with an antelope, den of
rattle snakes, rabbits, chipmunks, and meadowlarks. Later in the day we hiked
the Door and Fossil Exhibit trails. We’d planned to camp, but a full day of
exposure to the Badlands sun and wind sent us to a motel in Wall.
Castle Trail 1987.
For
the next day we’d planned to hike a loop out of the campground in Sage Creek.
We were using the blue-covered 1:50,000 map 1981 Badlands NP which showed two
loop trails leaving the campground. We lost the trail almost immediately and
ended up just walking the south fork of Sage Creek, making a small loop at its
head, while we tried to find the campground shown on our map. I was told later
by BNP rangers that they considered the trail abandoned as it had succumbed to erosion
and was indistinguishable from a maze of bison trails by the mid-1980s. We had
seen bison on the road driving in, but saw none on the hike, despite crossing
three prairie dog towns. We saw a group of 10-12 deer.
Eric in the Sage Creek WIlderness.
There
were some especially colorful bread loaf-shaped outcrops of Chadron Formation
(Yellow Mounds?), and we could see the effect of wind erosion on the underlying
Pierre Shale. There was up to a foot of water in the south fork of Sage Creek,
but we were always able to find easy places to cross. The wind was gusting to
~30mph, enough to make walking upwind difficult on our return.
Sage Creek Wilderness Trails from the 1981 map.
I
would go back to the badlands one more time that year, this time by myself. On
the first (10-24-87) day my main trip
was from east end of the Castle Trail to the Saddle Pass TH and back.
Badlands near Sadddle Pass.
Then
I hiked the Notch Trail, with its stupendous ladder climb.
Ladder on the Notch Trail.
For
part 3, I tried to access the badlands from the west side of the Fossil Exhibit
Trailhead, but found the terrain too steep to do so safely. Instead, I went to The
Bigfoot Overlook and hiked hike about 2.5 miles south down the wall on the abandoned
Bigfoot Road before being turned around by a sea of wet gumbo. I would
eventually lose the precious paper 1:50K BNP sheet I was using for my base map,
so my exact route from Bigfoot Pass would be the first of a few off trail
routes lost with it.
Sunset from old Bigfoot Pass Road.
I’d
talked with the rangers the previous day and they may have given me the idea to
try for Deer Haven the next day. The basic route is straightforward. I parked
at the Conata PC area and looped around one buttress of the wall and then passed
a dried pond beside rolls of fencing. I went through one gap in the buttes then
past two draws leading north before coming to opening headed by Deer Haven.
BNP Deer Haven.
There
were old fenceposts here leading WSW off to an old silo. At the head of the draw,
I could see signs of horses and pickups, though this was part of the
wilderness. The geology of Deer Haven is similar to Cliff Shelf. Deer Haven is
a large slump block. The slumping breaks up the poorly consolidated bedrock and
allows it to hold enough water for trees to go. Animals use the trees for
shelter and graze on the more abundant grasses and forbs that grow in the
wetter area.
Look closely for bighorn sheep in center of photo.
I
walked around the head of the slump block to the east end of Deer Haven where
it was cut by an extremely steep gully. I went up a small notch leading to the
plateau above Deer Haven and scared up a group of five bighorn sheep, including
two rams. Exploring more around the canyon at the east end I found abundant
sheep scat. To the north I hit another very steep canyon. My route gets a bit
muddled from here (I have only an old xerox of my field map), but I ended up
having to descend my ascent route to reach the valley floor below Deer Haven. I
was back after 11 miles in six hours, not having seen any other hikers.
Gully at the east end of Deer Haven.
All
this background is to build myself some credibility for planning a trip that
could have gone wrong, a winter, solo, off trail backpacking loop through the
heart of the Sage Creek Wilderness. Well, maybe not completely solo, I was dog
sitting my friend Karl’s dog, so I brought Nitro along. And maybe not really
winter, it was only Thanksgiving.
Pinnacles Overlook 1987.
To
get a good start I drove over to Interior to stay in the campground the night
before. When I took Nitro out for an evening walk since it was bright enough to
walk without a light, and warm enough to walk in a T-shirt. A front was
expected for the next day. Some of the gullies were filled with snow, a good
sign since that might give us extra water beyond what I could carry for the two
days.
For
the backpack we would start at Conata Picnic Area. My field maps covered three
sheets and I tried to take good notes. Though my 1:50K master map is gone,
luckily the notes and field sheets have survived, and I have a rough idea of
the route. The hike started from the Conata Picnic Area., I saw deer and
pronghorn on the drive in. This time I hiked past Deer Haven another mile
before turning north and having a tough 45 minute climb up the Badlands Wall,
the main divide between the upper grasslands and the lower badlands. After
lunch I did a short loop hike in the valley northwest of Deer Haven. The most
remarkable sight was human footprints on a buffalo trail. We’d spotted rabbits
and bison on the hike, Nitro behaved well around both.
Nitro on bison trail.
I
found a nice spot in a clump of trees and set up camp shortly after noon. Once
I had the fly on the tent ,it started sprinkling. I pulled two big burrs off Nitro;
he’d had a tough morning. He didn’t like the climb up the wall at all. I’d
carried his pack a short ways, and lifted him across one particularly deep
gulley.
Campsite, Sage Creek Wilderness.
Later
in the afternoon we did a loop hike around the butte to our south. We had great
scrambling and scenery, but it started to drizzle again around 4:30. It got
dark quick, My stove was not working (Was this the end of my old Svea from the
AT?) I barely had time for hot chocolate in camp, and didn’t get my stew
completely cooked. I had planned a three day trip, but was now looking at
options for a one night trip.
Our
water froze overnight, and with the stove not working, breakfast was cold. But fast
hiking would warm us up. Nitro was cold, thirsty, and hungry. I’d originally
planned for him to sleep in the vestibule of my clip flashlight, but pulled him
into the tent at night to keep us both warm. We started west across the open
Sage Creek Basin to round the north end of Hay Butte (aka “Butte 22/26” after
the sections it occupied). We saw two sets of footprints along the way and
spooked one herd of bison. It was eerie to hear their hooves drumming as they
moved away.
We
hiked south around the west side of Hay Butte reaching Sage Creek Pass at about
11:30. I made a note that a further westward route would have avoided climbing
in and out of the drainages. We saw two deer just after leaving the pass. We
passed more bison and two prairie dog towns, and the weather was clearing and
warming. The gumbo had starting thawing by late morning, making some areas slow
going. We saw scattered stock ponds and the remains of old fences. Nitro was
curious about the prairie dog towns. A notch at the Section 35/36 fence line
made a good short cut.
We
joined our outbound route just before passing south of Conata Basin. After 7
hours of walking, we were back at the Conata Picnic Area after ~20 miles
(according to a later GPS plot of our route).
When
it became time (1992) to write up Badlands National Park trails for the first
edition of my hiking guide I realized that it would be futile to try to include
a specific route at Sage Creek. In those pre-GPS days few folks could have
followed a route like this through the Badlands. So, I limited my entry for
Sage Creek to strategies for off trail hiking in the Badlands, and a few
suggestions on places to go.
Reconstructed Sage Creek map with 1988 trip in yellow.
The
park currently (2023) has an “Open Park” policy, meaning that hikers are free
to go where they want, on or off trail. Pets are no longer permitted in the
backcountry. The hike from Conata Picnic Area to Deer Haven seems well known,
but is still not a marked trail. There are a lot of online references to BNP
hiking, but the one that caught my interest is on the Hiking Project website.
It has an entry that describes closely my Thanksgiving loop with Nitro, with
the exception of an initial climb up the Badlands Wall at Deer Haven. Maybe the
more things change...
Sage Creek Wilderness route from Hiking Project 2017.
