Are the Trails Crowded?

With the exception of a couple trails, most Black Hills hiking trails are not crowded. Determinants of crowding may include 1) the need to protect wilderness for the benefit of other species, 2) the need to protect our own long-term resources, such as water, and 3) the need to provide for human recreation and primitive experience.

Environmental groups note an abundance of roads in the Black Hills. Though there may be heavy summer traffic on highways through the Black Hills, the trails are generally not crowded simply because most of the travelers do not hike the longer trails.  Much of their vacation walking may be done aside from the trail systems.

The notable exceptions are the two routes from Sylvan Lake to Harney Peak. Those trails are Harney Peak Trail #9 and Cathedral Spires Trail #4. Trail #4 is the less crowded of the two. In wintertime the Big Hill Trails might be considered crowded with cross-country skiers, but that is not our concern here.

On nearly any summer day with tolerable weather, one might encounter a hundred or more people on trail #9 from Sylvan Lake to Harney Peak—depending on the time of day. On pleasant weekends throughout the rest of the year, it would be rare to hike the trail alone. The other end of the same trail, from Willow Creek Horse Camp to Harney Peak, may host in summer a couple groups of horseback riders daily, but the trail is not crowded otherwise.

On any other of the longer trails in the Hills, a hiker may spend most of the day and rarely see another hiker. Horses and mountain bikes are more rare. There are many areas even in summertime where one may hike all day and not meet anyone.

Over two million tourists visit Mount Rushmore each summer, but evidently few of them venture far upon a hiking trail. The hiker can, often even in summertime, leave the highway a quarter mile south of Mount Rushmore, venture quickly into wilderness area, and not see another person for hours.

Why is there so much foot traffic on the Sylvan Lake to Harney Peak Trail? The short answer is that Harney Peak is a catch-phrase in any synopsis of what the Hills have to offer, and this trail is the easiest route to that peak. Mountain ranges are often known for their peaks. Harney Peak is the highest in the Black Hills. Not only that, but one would have to travel east almost a third of the way around the globe to find a peak that is higher. That is in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain.

So Harney Peak is the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Pyrenees of Europe. That is its claim to fame. It is a claim often seen in tourist literature. Additionally, the peak is located in Black Elk Wilderness, a beautiful area with granite outcrops of fanciful shapes, and sometimes, of megalithic proportion.

There are several peaks in the Black Hills that are nearly as high in elevation as Harney Peak. Each peak could be granted Harney’s claim if the geologic intrusion and uplift that formed Harney had happened to stop a few yards short. And those other Peaks are not crowded. Odakota Mountain is only 40 feet below Harney. But who wants to go home reciting the adventure of hiking up lonely Odakota, the SECOND highest point between the Rocky Mountains and the Pyrenees?

The contrast of the Sylvan to Harney Trail with the other trails of the Black Hills is substantial. There are over a hundred other places to hike in the Hills. A third are more difficult. Two-thirds are easier, but no major trail receives but a fraction of the traffic of the Sylvan to Harney Trail. In fact, the trailhead at Sylvan Lake may be the only one in the Hills that is impossible at times to find parking space in. And it is one of very few which require a fee. Excepting trails #9 and #4 from Sylvan Lake, there is hardly a backwoods trail in the Black Hills where solitude is not plentiful.

Wilderness Hikes near Rushmore Tourism

Some hikers doubt that a primitive experience is possible near a prime tourist attraction like Mount Rushmore. Part of what we enjoy in hiking is to revisit a world away from industrialization. Partly it is the self-sufficiency of knowing we are on our own without ready access to modern convenience or even the aid of a search party.

Along with the exercise of hiking, we may find an inner strength when we look around at our austere surroundings and deeply realize that in time of emergency, NO ONE is there to help us. And in such circumstances we may discover a deeper purpose to our lives, something we cannot contemplate when surrounded by the compulsive lifestyles of industrialized society and its obsession with convenience.

We have had this feeling at 12,000 feet elevation, where the landscape above timberline suggests that humankind, as a society, simply could not survive there. In our surroundings were no traces of civilization. Villages do not grow in 200 inches of winter snow and in near-hurricane force wind-chill factors. Yet there we stood with a companion or two, the Daniel Boones and Jim Bridgers of the modern world.

It's a great feeling if we can hang on to it for ten minutes before up the trail behind us comes another seeker from the Denver Metropolitan Area—followed by another and another. Colorado, which hosts the highest peaks along the Continental Divide, is also host to the most crowded trails—largely inaccessible in wintertime.

So while none of the granite there resembles George Washington, neither do the dozens of hikers replicate Daniel Boone. In fact, those stark trails begin to look like assembly lines for high-tech, Jim Bridger re-enactors.

Yet simultaneously in the Black Hills, there are dozens of trails where a hiker may wander all day and rarely meet another person. And in wintertime the solitude may be more profound than along the Continental Divide—when most people are able to visit it. And if we examine more closely some of the trails in the Black Hills, we will find that many require a greater energy level than trails along the Continental Divide.

A good hike is not merely a trophy hunt. The benefits of hiking are much more subtle than how high upon the earth’s surface we sign a guest register of the elite hikers who made it to the top. Such obsession leads only to the very unnatural activity of trying to scale Mount Everest in some variety of space suit and surrounded by a blinding snowstorm.

In Colorado, Long’s Peak at over fourteen thousand feet beckons trophy hunters too numerous for the parking lot there to contain. But here in the Hills, Deerfield Trail #40 provides a more strenuous and secluded hike than does Long’s Peak, and there is plenty of parking space at the trailhead. To some extent, it is our obsession with trophy hunting, getting to the highest peak, that is crowding out the wilderness experience.

Small though it may be, Black Elk Wilderness has a lonely and rugged beauty not outdone by other areas. We may occasionally miss the broad alpine expanses in the Windrivers of Wyoming. We may remember fondly the endless wilds of Idaho, but how often we encounter those who have been there mourning the few occasions throughout the year when they avail themselves of a wilderness trek. Indeed, rare are the places like the Black Hills where one can engage in a weekly hike throughout the year.

We who wander the primitive areas of America relish the opportunity to leave our compulsive, technological lifestyle behind in favor of natural surroundings. We hike to escape the box of technological culture. In our world of stark contrasts, we are space walkers departing from the security of our mother ship to venture into the precarious world of nature. We are time-travelers taking with us the knowledge of refined technological advancement into the rugged past of the nomad and the pioneer, and further yet into the sublime realities of a cougar stalking prey or of geese treading southward in the air.

We live in a world of stark contrasts. Outdoor adventurers rely upon an assortment of space-age technology. We rehearse our plans on personal computers and pack our digital cameras into backpacks designed by computers and built by robots. Then we drive to the trailhead in vehicles that would awe the first man on the moon or convince the Neanderthal that we are aliens or sorcerers.

At the trailhead, we divest ourselves of only a part of that technology. Some hikers, dressed in fluorescent sportswear, conduct their parting ritual of packing their brightly-colored gear, and then they march off onto the trail. There these hikers, unmindful of their appearance, may disparage a little horse poop as pollution, certified weed-free or not. They may glance suspiciously at the veteran wearing khaki or olive-drab memorabilia, and they may strive all day for that lonely position upon which to place a neon-colored tent.

At their place of refuge among austere peaks and gurgling streams, they pull out a compass Columbus would have marveled at and review a topographic map created by aerial optics that would puzzle Spinoza. Or perhaps they demonstrate to the neophyte among them the miracles of a global-positioning unit making instant contact to satellites invisibly hovering in the lower heavens. Then perhaps they call home on their cell phone to announce their "wilderness" triumph before unpacking their freeze-dried snacks and lightweight, alloyed-metal cook stoves.

The deeper we trek into the remote wilderness areas of the Continental Divide, the more technological becomes our gear. We holster grizzly-grade pepper spray and dawn sunglasses and sunscreen with chemical coatings and ingredients no tribal medicine man ever heard of.

And we who trek eastern Black Elk Wilderness may look up and see on Mount Rushmore the raw stone visage of Washington reviewing our conduct. Shall we then, merely because of him, conclude that we have lost that wilderness feeling? Why would we overlook all our sophisticated gear and suppose a classical sculpture makes all the difference?

Does a view of Mount Rushmore detract from our wilderness experience? Perhaps some of us inherited an authoritarian revision of the Founders’ views and it is that authoritarianism that we rightly prefer to shed in the wilderness.

But the revisionism of Parson Weems and of William Burkett need not smother the Founders’ characters. We can recall them with their companions. Then John Adams’ views of national mythology may overcome those of Weems, and Madison and Jefferson’s views displace the naïve Burkett.

To some, Mount Rushmore may represent narrow "virtues" of "manliness" and hard work. But some of those Founders left that work or their house guests on a daily basis to pursue for hours their own independent studies of nature, or to simply roam the countryside alone.

Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin would not qualify for most job listings today because they lacked anything close to a formal high school education—replete with its technology. Washington and Lincoln had about a year of formal schooling, then they taught themselves. Franklin had only a few years of schooling, yet his daily reading habits earned him fame throughout Europe as "The Philosopher" of America. Jefferson, John Adams, and Madison completed college more quickly than allowed today, but their real education was their lifelong love of books and of nature away from the academic routine.

An occasional glance at Mount Rushmore may remind us of a more primitive colonial and pioneering age—of Washington’s long, lonely jaunts into Ohio country, where the only sign of humankind was a rare Indian trace. Or a glance may remind us of Jefferson's private rides into the unsettled Appalachian hinterlands of Albemarle County.

But these men and women didn’t only ride horses. They hiked as well. So the stone sculpture of Rushmore recalls the audacity of Theodore Roosevelt inviting foreign dignitaries to forsake the tennis court in favor of a scramble off-trail up some thorny mountain side. And that focal point of tourism reminds us of Abe Lincoln strolling the backwoods of Kentucky.

We recall Ben Franklin or John Adams braving rugged terrain to treat with Indian tribes or to attend a colonial congress. And there are the thousands of pioneer women who walked the Oregon or Mormon trails or who by themselves shot the bear in their own backyard. A broader view of Mount Rushmore commemorates them also.

Rushmore faces mostly away from Black Elk Wilderness. From most of that area the mountain looks no different than the other rock outcrops. From the eastern part of the wilderness, atop the hills, Mount Rushmore looks hardly more modern in color and shape than something from the classical age of Greek sculpture over two thousand years ago. One look at the contents of our backpack reduces the primitive experience as much as does Mount Rushmore. And most Black Hills trails don't even view that mountain.

The men and women which Mount Rushmore represents can be unobtrusive and welcome companions on a journey through the unconventional wilds. With an accurate review of history, they are no longer the towering authority figures distorted in our heritage. They too were lonely wanderers, adventurers, and unorthodox rebels in their time. They too resorted to nature and to nature’s God.