Land of ghosts 6

Spearfish Canyon and a bike ride

We both kinda fell in love with the southern hills, but it was time to move on. We had rented a cabin in Spearfish Canyon at Rim Rock Lodge in the northern hills, and after a long drive, we got to experience the towering rock formations that line the canyon.. I wasn't sure what to make of the cabin given its outward appearance but the inside it was well-maintained, comfortable and afforded us the sound of Spearfish Creek to fall asleep to. Because it's located so close to Deadwood, a town like Las Vegas we choose not to visit, it doesn't get the attention it deserves (thankfully).

I think old Frank Loyd Wright summed it up.

I had been training for a ride on the Tinton Trail for quite a while. I knew it involved an extended climb at elevation, 7 miles topping out at 5500 feet. The good folks at Rushmore Mountain Sports were cool enough to give me good advice, and i learned from them that there is an extensive network of singletrack accessible right from town. Because it's located within a national forest, everything is rideable, but the severe winter storm had left many trail still unpassable.
I started up the Tinton Trail intending to ride it as an out and back.The unique thing about it was that the climb was gradual and broken up by an occasional downhill segment, so I never really felt like I was burning up. Nevertheless, it was every bit of seven miles up to the Big Hill Trail system, and I crossed through a series of vegetation zones, starting with ponderosa pine gradually changing to aspen, then mountain meadow. I happened to see Karen at a road crossing and waved her down (running into each other in the middle of nowhere seems to happen to us a lot!). She was having a tough time finding a short cut to the trail she wanted to hike. There was no cell reception and the maps weren't of much help. She pressed on, tho, and I was confident she'd be ok.

Once I got tot he top, I was faced with a stacked loop trail system that offered another 15-20 miles of riding and some awesome mountain meadows. I decided to hit two of the four loops. The Dakota 5-0 Race follows this route and having seen the terrain, I wouldn't mind giving the race a shot. It was very cool riding, remote, quiet and rewarding.

Of course, the best part of the ride was knowing that I got to bomb back down seven miles to the trailhead.
And it was awesome. What didn't seem particularly technical or narrow on the way up turned into a hootenanny on the way down. I got going way too fast way too many times and had to throttle back pretty hard. The clay trailbead was bermed just enough that you could carry a lot of speed through the corners, and if I had bigger balls or a familiarity of the trail, it could have gotten stupid fun and dangerous if I had let it. Seven miles of mostly downhill left a big old perma-smile of my face.

And a little post-ride stop at Killians Tavern was the perfect ending. They're aweful proud of that Salsa Spearfish on the wall, and rightly so. I can't say I'm all fired up about driving two days through the the Great Plains just to ride there again, but the singletrack was sweet, and unlike anything I had ever ridden. I'll be happy if I ever make it back there.

Good shit. There's also singletrack around Crow Peak, which you can see to the west of Spearfish.





This is Bear Butte, one of the holiest places for the Plain Natives. We hiked up in the evening. It's just north of Sturgis and the contrast between our culture and the Native culture couldn't be any more striking. Sturgis is the site of an American tradition which says a great deal about our culture, and Bear Butte is a site of an ancient Native Tradition, the Sun Dance. All I can say is that climbing the mountain was spiritual for us. It's a church. We saw families with kids climbing to the top, a fairly rugged hike that takes an hour or so. It was here that we found the purpose of the strips of clothe: the Native People hang them along with tobacco as prayer offerings. We decided to stop 3/4 of the way to the top out of respect for the Native People. This was the only picture we took, and I hope the spirits were ok with that.