The Badlands get bad

7/15/17

I awoke this morning to the sound of trains in my backyard. At 5:45 AM. It turns out that everywhere in Wall, SD is within earshot of the train tracks, and they cannot be escaped. However, my willpower when it comes to sleep is a lot stronger than the mere shrilling of trains 300 feet away.

I awoke again this morning to blistering heat inside my tent as the sun hit its sides. At 8 AM. This was a more reasonable time to be awake, and there was no way I was going to sleep through heat of that magnitude, so I got up.

You would think that after driving more than a thousand miles north, maybe temperatures would have cooled off a little. But through the stupidity of local geography and weather patterns, that was not the case. The weather forecast said it would be 98*F (5 degrees colder than Austin! Whoo!) with a “real feel” of 105*F.

Perfect weather to go hike every trail in the Badlands!

I took advantage of the nicer cool weather to snap some photos at little overlooks and other minor spots, in order to maximize the amount of time that I would spend baking and hiking my legs off in the afternoon. Remember a couple of posts ago how my brain pretty much got fried, and then a post later where I wondered if I may be stupid? I’ve kind of concluded that yes, I have definitely gotten dumber.

Jane and I trundled down the highway to the other end of the park where the visitor center informed me that I would need lots of water (duh) and that the heat was reaching dangerous levels (pshhhh). I was then given a sheet of paper with 6 trails on it.

I started with the Gap Trail, a short quarter mile boardwalk away from the parking lot that looks over a super dramatic looking canyon.

Then I moved on to the real challenge, the Castle Trail. Normally, it is 5 miles long one-way, but if you combine it with the Medicine Root trail nearby, it becomes a 7-mile round trip. Perfect for the hottest part of the day!

The trail takes you across grassland and meanders through some of the formations jutting up through the plains. It’s a great chance to see some amazing rocks from both near and far, and wildlife frequently appears in the grasslands there. Not during the hottest part of the day, of course – that would just be silly! Consequently, I saw a lot of rocks and a lot of grass and exactly one chipmunk and some birds.

Despite the lack of wildlife, I really liked the trail a lot. No one else was on the trail, so it was just me and the blue sky and flat grasslands and these remarkable colorful banded formations holding out against the trials of time. It was a far cry from yesterday’s Mount Rushmore visit; instead of feeling awash in the flood of humanity, I was grounded, just another part of the frontier. But at the same time, I felt the impermanence of it all. These outcrops shrink at a rate of an inch a year – so even in a hundred-year time scale, they will look drastically different. Eventually, they will melt away like ice, adding their dust to the soil of the plains. There’s something profound in that, I think.

A pile of winnowed dust at the base of this outcrop reveals its ultimate fate.

Less scenic, more "bad" lands

After a few hours of contemplating life and marching around in the blistering heat, I was feeling a bit ragged. But the end was in sight! I got back to the trailhead only to find that I had dropped my handkerchief (an essential item for removing sweat and dirt from yourself when you start feeling a little overwhelmed by it) somewhere back along the trail. Ugh. I was determined to go back and get it and ended up backtracking about a mile and a quarter, which was foolish and which changed my 7-mile hike into something like a 9-mile hike. Fortunately I had plenty of water, but my legs were definitely hollering and I was covered in this white Badlands dust which tends to get everywhere and scrape your skin raw. It would have been miserable if I hadn't been having so much fun! Call me weird, I guess.

I returned to the trailhead finally and my legs informed me that they were done for the day, having gotten used to a cushy Austin life in which they were never required to go further than 6 miles. I informed them that I was not done for the day, because I still had the Notch, Door, and Fossil trails to finish!

I started with the Notch trail because the rangers had told me that the best views in the park could be found there. By this time the afternoon light was getting long, and it was approaching the time when the Badlands were best viewed. The rangers had warned me though of the strenuous nature of the trail, which included a long ladder and quite a bit of cliffside walking that could be questionable for those scared of heights. I thought back to Angels Landing of Zion National Park, Utah, and kind of scoffed. If I can walk across a knife-edge ridge 1800 feet above the canyon floor, how bad could this be?

The answer is: not bad at all. Honestly, I don’t know who is freaked out by walking within 10 feet of the side of a cliff that maybe could drop you 20 feet. It’s not like you’re going to spontaneously trip and fall to a point 10 feet away from your start point. And this ladder was a joke! A lady was very, very slowly crawling down it and I confess I got a bit fed up. You see, half of the ladder is resting on the side of a slope… a slope that can definitely, positively, be walked up under any normal circumstances, even in flip flops. So I walked up that slope past the lady crawling down, and I think she felt a bit silly because after I passed her she promptly stood up, went “Oh,” and walked the rest of the way down. C’mon!

The view from the top of the Notch was worth the silliness, though. The rangers weren’t wrong about it being a spectacular view, though I contest that some of the other more “dense” badlands-y outcrops may be more dramatic and beautiful in the right light. Nevertheless, that valley overlook was an incredible sight to behold.

I didn’t stay too long, having two more trails to visit before nightfall. Both were short – the first was Door, which is a short half-mile boardwalk trail that culminates in a bowl of maze-like Badlands rocks. You can wander around in that bowl for hours checking out the amazing vistas and the crazy coloration in the rocks of the Brule Formation (the banded rocks that make the Badlands famous primarily belong to this formation).

And finally, I hopped up the road to the Fossil trail, which advertised itself as a short loop with fossil replicas. In my head I had envisioned a trail that wound through the Badlands, showing how and where fossils were found in addition to providing information about the types of fossils found. I admit to being pretty disappointed when I saw a boardwalk loop that just stopped at different waysides briefly describing different animals found in the ancient pre-Badlands environments. While that was cool in and of itself, I really would have liked to see more information about the scientific process that proceeds before, during, and after the discovery of fossils in the field. Since Badlands is so big on citizen science (having visitors report on fossils they find), I thought that they would have emphasized this more. Alas! Maybe a future exhibit will address this. I guess I really only care because I have a paleontology background, and I love to teach people about how the field of paleontology actually works.

Anyways, after that loop I drove back up towards Wall again, thoroughly exhausted after over 11 miles of hiking on a very hot day. I’m a bit disappointed in my hiking ability as it stands currently, but I’m sure it’ll be back up to snuff in no time flat! The heat really takes it out of you.

Jane acquires admirers.

My last stop of the day was, of course, Wall Drug. I’m just totally fascinated with this weird place. I spent quite a while wandering around checking out their old photos documenting early Western life – can’t say I didn’t enjoy the air conditioning either.

Fifteen seconds after parking... lol.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading on from Badlands to Devil’s Tower, continuing the theme of “weird geological landmarks”. But for now… Kelly signing out.