black hills

As we made our way to the Black Hills, we hit Rapid City, South Dakota. We thought that as a major entryway into a major national forest, that it would be set up for tourists and backpackers...but we were wrong. We spent forever turning around and around in the city before fleeing to the hills and spending our first night there in the aforementioned expensive campground that caused our trip meltdown.

We realized a few things that night. That we needed to figure out how to camp for free. That we needed to scale way back on the places that we were going. That we fought the most when we spent the most time in the car rather than out and about. Our first night, we fell into uneasy slumber while all of this rolled through our heads and our first Black Hills hailstorm rolled over our heads.

We woke to a sunny morning and headed straight for the ranger station, a move that has since proved to be extremely useful. We leveled with the rangers and told them we wanted to hike and camp for free, and they told us how we could do it. We headed into the Black Elk Wilderness, and plotted out a 14 mile mountain hike that would have us sleeping out on the trail for a night while the van was parked at the trailhead. The day before our hike we spent getting our bags ready and hanging out in Hill City, which really helped to improve our mental states. Hill City was what we expected Rapid City to be. There was a cool outfitter in town and some decent people watching. We slept in the van that, and another hail storm moved over us that was extremely loud on the top of the van. As the night went on, we thought the storm had lulled but when we got out the next morning, realized that a build up of hail on the top of the van had just dulled the racket. There was still an inch of pea sized hail on the ground that morning and it stayed in many spots all through the day. Figuring that we were in for a storm the night that we were going to spend in the backcountry, we headed out prepared with warm clothes and rain gear.

The morning of the hike was intensely beautiful. Mountain streams were running high, making for many stream crossings in the middle of the trail. We rambled around and scrambled up rocks to get amazing views of the forest and the mountains. We relaxed. Toward the early afternoon, just after passing some trail horse riders, we heard grumbles of thunder. We picked up the pace, but it was to no avail: the hail came early that afternoon and we got drenched. It didn't matter to us: we were surrounded by beauty and inside rain coats so the soaking wasn't too terrible, until I realized that my backpack that I had been told was waterproof wasn't actually waterproof. If we stayed out that night, I'd be in wet clothes. So we decided to take our easy 2 day hike and do it in one day.

I'm pretty proud of the fact that we made all 14 mountainous miles in good spirits even though we were starting to get pretty tired. It was about 50 degrees when we got back to our van but I wanted a shower right then and there. Tim, in all his husbandly glory, filled up his 6L water bag and hooked it up to a tree and we showered in the freezing water in the cold air. After our teeth stopped chattering, we headed into Hill City and treated ourselves to a hot meal of local buffalo (pretty much everything in Hill City has buffalo in it). We didn't even wake up for the hail storm that night.

Sorry - no pics this time. I'm done fighting with Blogger when it doesn't want to work. We'll see if Picasa or something else can help with the picture situation but it sucks up a lot of time to sit here in coffee shops and try to get it to work.