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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The four buttes descending the Mike Auney Trail. |
That left a single segment to go for TRNP.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Our route with trails in red. |
