Backpacking the South Dakota Centennial Trail
The Centennial Trail in South Dakota is a trail that runs from Bear Butte just outside of Sturgis to Wind Cave NP. It runs anywhere from 111 to 123 miles in length, depending on which source you consult. It is also part of a new proposed long distance trail called the Great Plains Trail.
I recently decided to try to thru-hike the Centennial Trail along with my dad and some friends. It has been almost ten years since I last backpacked so there was a lot of work that needed to be done in order to prepare for this trip. I brought along my phone and a small point-and-shoot camera to make iNat observations, along with a small solar charger to recharge their batteries. I would have loved to bring my dSLR but I was trying to carry as little weight as possible and it would have taken a lot of time to constantly dig it out of my pack, so it had to be left behind for most of the trip.
The trail starts at the top of Bear Butte, a 4,426 ft peak that juts out of the prairie just north of Sturgis, SD. We did a short day-hike without packs to the top in order to acclimate to the altitude. Bear Butte is a very steep and windy mountain so we thought it best to leave the heavy packs at home for the day. It was an amazing view from the top, looking out across the prairie and the Black Hills.
The day after we hiked Bear Butte, we finally put the packs on and started off across the prairie that winds from the lake at the base of Bear Butte to Fort Meade, which was at one point was the encampment of the 7th Cav. Hiking on the prairie is something I recommend everyone does at least once in their life. It may seem like boring terrain, but the biodiversity is quite incredible once you see it up close. The different shades of green grasses that shimmer when the wind blows is something that really cannot be fully captured in a picture.
The trail then winds through the small foothills of the Black Hills, and then finally goes up steep switchbacks all the way to the top of the hills. At this point we were in large ponderosa pines and alternated between single-track trails and ATV forest roads. Every so often we came across areas of the forest that had been thinned out. There has been a lot of forest management in Black Hills National Forest and it was interesting to see all of the different techniques used. Sometimes we saw evidence of forest fires, sometimes it was damage from the infamous mountain pine beetles, and sometimes it was evidence of logging for profit.
We traveled up and down steep mountains for several days, encountering lots of different wildlife. At one point we had to take shelter under a small overhang at a campground at Dalton Lake due to a hail storm. We saw the ominous clouds while on top of a ridge so we hustled down the trail which luckily led into the campground so as not to be struck by lightning. But instead ping-pong ball sized (and even a few lemon-sized) hail fell as soon as we reached the overhang.
As we got farther south, there were more and more large scattered meadows to walk through (though the large forested mountains were still in abundance). We saw a beautiful Black Hills redbelly snake, a rare subspecies of the redbelly snake. We passed by the clear waters of Pactola Reservoir which was our half-way point, allowing us to spend the night back in town to shower, resupply, and recuperate a bit.
The next day we got right back on trail where we left off. While hitting a transition between prairie and forest, I observed a black-backed woodpecker on a large ponderosa pine. Unfortunately I only had a point-and-shoot camera at this point so the photo was not of the best quality. Though this species is more common in other parts of the US, it has a small isolated range in the Black Hills and is threatened by the logging industry. There has been a push to get protected status in the hills for them, as well as a genetic investigation into the possibility of this being its own subspecies.
We then passed the beautiful Sheridan lake, crossing a creek on some beautifully constructed bridges. But then the worst climb of the trip started. The trail went for several miles slowly up a mountain. Just as we thought we were at the top, we quickly found that there was more to climb. At one point, a hiker traveling in the opposite direction told us we only had about a quarter mile of uphill left to go. Several miles later, we were still traveling uphill. When we were finally headed down the mountain on the other side, we were pleased to see some nice views of the Black Elk Wilderness, our hike planned for the next day. When we finally finished the downhill, we made the decision to head back to town for the night to get some rest. After that day, we weren't too upset to be off trail for a little bit.
The next day we decided to do a day hike (without packs) up Black Elk Peak, the "highest elevation east of the Rockies." This trail is not on the Centennial trail, but we all wanted to conquer the peak instead of doing a potentially more grueling hike through the entirety of the Black Elk Wilderness. This gave everyone a chance to truly recuperate, and we later decided to slack-pack for the remainder of our Centennial Trail trip. We skipped ahead a bit to Custer State Park for a short 6 mile hike. We then skipped some more of the trail to the very last section, Wind Cave National Park, due to impending extremely bad weather. Both of these sections go through more beautiful prairie and have ample wildlife. At one point in Wind Cave, we had to walk out and around a herd of about 60-70 bison which was a truly amazing sight.
The trail ends within Wind Cave NP. Though we weren't able to do the entire trail, we did hike a total of 96 miles, 89.8 of which were on the Centennial Trail. At the lowest we were at 3,060 ft, and the highest was 5,894 ft (excluding the hike to 7208 ft up Black Elk Peak). It was different to use iNaturalist on a backpacking trip than on a normal hiking trip. I learned a lot of new techniques, using my Garmin Fenix 5 watch to get GPS coordinates and other trail data, Garmin BaseCamp to geotag photos, an iPhone, small point-and-shoot camera, and dSLR while slack-packing. This was an amazing trip and I cannot wait to go back and finish the sections that we had to skip over.
