TRNP Map Finish and Mike Auney Trail, 10-15-22

I first began hiking at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 1988, when I was living in Lead, SD and working at the Homestake Gold Mine. My friend and fellow hiker Craig was from North Dakota, and he persuaded me to visit TRNP in April when we hiked the Paddock-Talkington and Lone Tree Springs loops, then climbed the North Dakota highpoint at White Butte on the drive home. I was hooked on the area, and returned to the park that Memorial Day to hike the Buckhorn and Achenbach loops in the North Unit, and then the Jones-Paddock Loop in the South Unit.

Craig at the Petrified Forest, 1988

In 1992 when I had sold my first proposal for a Black Hills and Badlands hiking guide to Cordillera Press, I decided to add a short chapter on badlands hikes in North Dakota. The 1993 first edition would include White Butte, Little Missouri State Park, and the Petrified Forest, Jones -Lower Paddock, Caprock-Coulee, and Achenbach Loops in TRNP.

Paddock Creek, 1988

TRNP was still growing their trail system in those days, and by the time I would revise the Black Hills and Badlands trail guide in 1999 I added a section on “other TRNP trails”, that included brief descriptions of all the remaining park trails including new horse trails leading from the Roundup Horse Camp. I didn’t expect these horse trails to be too appealing, so they remained unhiked.

Of course, the big change in the North Dakota hiking world by 1999 was the construction of the Maah Daah Hey Trail to connect the South and North Units of the Park through the Little Missouri National Grassland. Jean and I weren’t able to make any ND trips for the 1999 guidebook update, but I was in touch with Curt and Russ, my contacts at the Forest Service about the trail. As of late 1998 when the book went to press the trail had been completely marked, but had not been constructed between the North Unit and the Mackenzie/Billings county line near FS Road 808. 

Petrified Forest, 1999.

Around this time Jean and I got interested in hiking “maps”. Hiking a “map” is essentially hiking all the trails that appear on a park map. The 900-milers, or all the trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is perhaps the best known of these. The run “every single trail’ project by Matt Kirk (matthewkirk.blogspot.com) maybe its most extreme case. Jean and I had done the 900 miles in the Smokies (900 milers), and then moved on to complete two smaller projects in the combined Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock(NC)  and Citico (TN) wildernesses and at Frozen Head State Park. TRNP has 95 miles of hiking trail, which is enough to make a tough map marking project.

With the original 96 mile Maah Daah Hey Trail complete, there was now enough trail in the North Dakota badlands to support a standalone hiking guide. My publisher and I decided to spin off the ND chapter of the Black Hills and Badlands guide into a separate book. To support the guide, Jean and I backpacked (2001 MDH BP) & 2004 MDH BP) the entire MDH trail in two long trips. The Forest Service was also now building a network of other trails around the MDH to support it, and I was able to mountain bike the Buffalo Gap Trail, which offered a bypass around the Wilderness Area in the South Unit of TRNP. But I was only able to provide brief descriptions of the other supporting trails, which I had not hiked.

The North Dakota guide was published in 2006. Along with providing the only detailed information for the Maah Daah Hey Trail, the book offered expanded descriptions of the trails in TRNP. But I still had not hiked the horse trails that had been “new” in 1999, and were now called the Roundup, Mike Auney, and East Entry trails.

The next step in the evolution of trails in the ND Badlands was the development of the Maah Daah Hey II, or “The Deuce”, also known as the Southern Section of the Maah Daah Hey. In this project, the Maah Daah Hey was extended south from the previous end at Sully Creek State Park, for 40 miles to the FS Burning Coal Vein Campground. The trail had been dug, but not all completed by the time Jean and I arrived to ride a section in 2011.

In the meantime, the guidebook publishing world was undergoing changes. Much more trail information became available online, and many users expected to get this information for free. Small publishing has always been a tough business and the publisher of my Dakota books didn’t survive this era. But by 2019 there was a new owner for the North Dakota title who was also interested in updating the book. I would soon be retired, and so it wasn’t hard to put together a plan for the new book. The goal would be to cover all the trails in TRNP and the Little Missouri National Grassland and add a few trails from elsewhere in the state such as White Butte, Little Missouri State Park, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, and the Sheyenne National Grassland segment of the North Country National Scenic Trail.

All of this would lead to an ideal opportunity for me to complete the maps for the TRNP and the LMNG on a long guidebook work trip in 2019 (Guidebook Link). Things went well in the LMNG until I tried to hike the Wolf Trail, and found the access road to be a rutted mess. Wolf is an isolated trail, and little used, so I rationalized skipping a detailed description for the guide.

Things went better in TRNP, Jean and I had already hiked the Roundup Trail, and found it a fun trip (2011 ND Blog). The old East Boundary Horse Trail had been removed from the map, leaving just the Mike Auney Trail unhiked.

The Mike Auney Trail consists of a 1.1 mile east segment from the Roundup Horse Camp west to a ford of the Little Missouri River, and a 1.7 mile west segment from the river up to an intersection with the Maah Daah Hey portion of the Petrified Forest Loop.

Unfortunately, I was told at the TRNP Visitor Center desk that access to the horse camp was restricted to those with reservations at the camp. Oh well, a general description of the trail would have to do. But later, I found out that the prohibition applied to vehicles only, and that it was okay to hike to the camp. In 2021 Jean and I hiked the west section from the Petrified Forest Loop (Petrified Forest Blog) to the river, and enjoyed that pretty trail section. 

The four buttes descending the Mike Auney Trail.

That left a single segment to go for TRNP. 

Wind Canyon.

For our 2022 visit, finishing the Mike Auney Trail would be top of our list. To add some icing on the cake I planned an off trail finish for the otherwise short completion hike. To give Jean a better idea of the planned route, we stopped at the Wind Canyon Nature Trail on the drive in. It was just after dawn (and cold), but we got great light at the magnificent overlook above the Little Missouri. By inspecting the off trail route with binoculars we confirmed that we should have no extraordinary obstacles. 

The Little Missouri River from the Wind Canyon Trail.

We parked at the junction of the gravel East River and Roundup Camp roads and began hiking toward the horse camp. As we approached the camp we saw a trail enter the road from the left. This turned out to be a short connector that horse riders used to access the Roundup Trail. At its west end, the Roundup Camp Road makes a sharp U-turn and enters the camp. To our surprise there was a camper and family there. The previous night’s low had been near freezing at the end of a cold windy stretch, so this must have been a hardy group. Their son directed us to the trailhead signboard and confirmed we were on the trail leading to the river.

The trail led across a low saddle then turned toward the river. It was a pretty trail with none of the overuse damage we’re used to seeing with horse trails. As we approached the river bottom, another trail, presumably from the camp, joined from our right. We continued on a nice gradual descent to the river bottom. Eventually, we dropped down two river terrace levels, and there it was the river, and the end of my TRNP map quest. We both remembered great rock skipping stones on the western shore, but could only find a few serviceable skippers on the east side. At the time we expected this hike also finished Jean’s TRNP map, but later realized she still had at least one trail in each unit that she hadn’t hiked.

End of the trail, Jean at the Little Missouri River.

After some celebratory hot tea, we decided to try our off trail return. We climbed up to the second terrace and started southeast across the sagebrush. We soon found an bison trail and took it to the edge of a large prairie dog town. Dog towns are always easy going, with plenty of antics from the residents to amuse hikers. This town didn’t see heavily populated, and we didn’t know if the dogs were less active in the cold, or if this town was in decline.

At the far end of the dog town, we spotted a herd of eight mule deer. When the mule deer turned north away from the river and Jules Creek we followed them up a small draw then across the face of a badlands butte. We descended off the game trail down to the East River Road and returned to the car. This was a total team effort, we’d followed paths made by men, horses, bison, prairie dogs, and deer to finish the TRNP map. On our next trip you can bet I’ll be out on the Wolf Trail, hoping to finish my grassland map.

Our route with trails in red.

The China Wall via Bennett Creek and the Maah Daah Hey Trail, 10-14-22

The China Wall from our 2001 trip.

One of the goals of our 2022 fall trip to the ND Badlands was to revisit some of our favorite places, without having the time pressure of working on a hiking guide. We wanted to spend more time near the North Unit, and one place that topped the list was the China Wall. Since Jean hadn’t hiked the Bennett Trail (she’d taken a rest day when I rode the Cottonwood-Maah Daah Hey-Bennett loop in 2019 (Here)) we decided to hike to the Wall from Bennett Campground.

The previous day had been windy, even by ND standards with gusts projected to 50 mph. Things had seemed to get worse in the afternoon, so we made sure we had an early start, and hoped that the trail along the creek would be sheltered enough from the wind. When we arrived the trailhead the temperature was about 40F, the trailhead was empty, and there was only a small trailer in the campground. The last register sign in was on September 11, and the entire roster for 2022  covered only one page. This would be our third day in a row without seeing any other hikers, we guessed others had the luxury of waiting for the wind to die down.

Bennett Trail marker.

From Bennett CG it is an easy three mile walk to the Maah Daah Hey Trail. There’s a rock hop of Bennett Creek near the start and a potential rock hop of Cottonwood Creek near the far end, otherwise the trail is well marked and easy to follow. We had talked the previous day with a TRNP ranger who’d had to abort a mountain bike trip on the trail due to pockmarking by the cattle that stay close to the creek. But, by the time of our trip the trail surface was reasonably smooth. To the first milepost the trail climbs gently. We saw one spot where the creek’s meanders had carved out several short pillars.

Small pillars carved in the canyon of Bennett Creek.

From my 2019 ride I remembered a spot where the trail was tough to follow right along the creek bank, and another small slump, but both these areas had since been fixed. We both were impressed by the fall colors, both in the trees and even in the grasses. At the Kryzsko Monument we got some great views of our remaining trail to the west.

View west from the Kryzsko Monument.

We saw a few skittish cows, but they were not impacting the trail. We spooked one pheasant.

After three miles we hit the Maah Daah Hey Trail, and I went into guidebook mode. The FS had recently relocated part of the trail from the berm of an old, failed stock pond to the hillside in back of it so I needed to map and measure the relocation, and update the description. The change added only 0.2 mile to the trail, but it set me thinking what would happen if enough relocations changed the overall mileage of the trail. Would that mean all the mileposts would need to be moved? The new section was still raw from its construction, it will be another season or more before it is trampled smooth.

After we passed the pond I realized the guidebook used the mileage for the start of the climb for the China Wall, and I’d need to adjust this for the wall itself. There were several sets of bluffs above the creek, and we weren’t sure which one contained the wall.

The China Wall from below.

The climb to the wall begins with a pair of sharp switchbacks, then climbs to a saddle in an unnamed butte that sits in the center of section 3. The trail is carved into a shear badlands wall before you reach the wall along its shear south face. The wall is essentially a thin fin of rock running across the top of a small saddle. It is near vertical on the south side, but gentler on the north.

To tie all our mileages together we walked down the north side in the juniper to the next milepost before hiking back up to eat lunch beside the wall.

Close up of the China Wall.

We’d lucked out with the weather. It was cool, but sunny, and the forecasted lull in the winds was a savior. We would simply need to retrace our route back to reach the trailhead, but the scenery was still pretty enough we didn’t mind at all repeating our route. Back at the car we finished up a 10 mile day, and looked forward to the TRNP South Unit part of our trip. 

Cross Ranch State Park ND Hiking, 10-12-22

Cross Ranch State Park was an area that I had wanted to add to my 2021 North Dakota hiking guidebook update (Guidebook link), but I just never had enough time to make a visit. Since then, Jean and I have been discovering how nice the ND State Parks are, with great trail systems and interesting interpretive displays. We decided to make Cross Ranch the first stop on our 2022 visit.

After spending the night in Bismarck, we arrived before the Visitor Center opened. The park trails form a daisy chain of loops along the west bank of the Missouri River. We decided to try the eight mile Matah (from the Mandan word for river), Cottonwood, and Gaines loops that extend north from the Visitor Center.

Trail intersection at Cross Ranch.

What a great choice. The first part of the Matah Trail is an interpretive loop giving us a quick lesson on the ecology of the river bottom ecosystem. The trail was a mowed path through an open forest of cottonwood, carpeted with thick prairie grasses. Most of the Matah Trail was right along the river, giving us nice views across the river. The first part of the loop passed the park campground, which also featured a few yurts and some cabins.

Cross Ranch was created from parts of the original Gaines Ranch, first settled in the late 1800’s. Gaines sold the ranch to the Levis, who hoped that the ranch could be turned into a state park. The Levis had bought the Maltese Cross brand that had been Theodore Roosevelt’s, and renamed the property as Cross Ranch. The Levis then sold to The Nature Conservancy (TNC), who later donated much of the land to the state to create the park. The next two loops (Cottonwood and Gaines) on our hike would be on Nature Conservancy land used by the park.

The Cottonwood and Gaines loops are away from the river, so we lost our extensive views. But the river bottom here is lush and parklike below the many mature cottonwoods, some of which have reached remarkable size. The river here was free flowing, rather than impounded behind the massive Garrison and Oahe dams. It was the biodiversity of the river bottom that first attracted the TNC to the area. Only after acquiring the property, did they realize the extent of the diversity of the unbroken upland prairie lands above the river.

Jean by a huge cottonwood.

Jean and I continued to enjoy the easy hiking along the river bottom. It was much colder than it had been at home, and the winds had begun to weave their way down to us. We skipped the Levis Trail at the far end of the park, expecting the northernmost loop would be similar to what we saw on the other loops, and we returned to the Visitor Center after hiking about 8 miles.

The ranger was about to head off for lunch, but he opened back up for us, and gave us more background on the park and its facilities. We planned to try the shorter Prairie Trail on The Nature Conservancy next, and he told us there had been a lone bison grazing near the start of the loop.

By the time we drove the extra mile up the road to the Nature Conservancy trailhead, the wind had picked up, with gusts reaching 30 mph. Luckily there was a trail map on the sign board, the two miles of trail was a complicated “lasso” shape with two other spurs leading off it, and a social trail to a small cemetery also starting from the trailhead.

Jean at The Nature Conservancy Trailhead.

The Prairie Trail was also a path mowed through the grassland. Immediately over the first hill we spotted the lone bison the ranger had mentioned. The preserve has a herd of around 200 bison, but they are apparently scattered over the three parcels that comprise the preserve. We looped around the bison, never coming so close that we needed to leave the trail. At the far end of the loop on a hilltop overlooking ranch headquarters was the small Gaines Cemetery. From there we turned back and fought our way upwind back to the trailhead, this time stopping off to see the larger Bagnell Cemetery on the knoll above the trailhead.

We both came away very impressed by the scenery and the condition of the trails. Hopefully, the guidebook will sell well enough to go to a third edition, and if so the Cross Ranch trails will be a great addition.