National Park Highpoints of the Midwest

National Park Highpoints of the Midwest

Nov 27 – Dec 2, 2020

Highpoints of Indiana Dunes, Voyageurs, Theodore Roosevelt, Badlands, and Wind Cave National Parks

Friday – Leave Berea, climb Indiana Dunes highpoint, drive to northern Minnesota
Saturday – Climb Voyageurs highpoint, drive to North Dakota
Sunday – Climb Theodore Roosevelt highpoint, White Butte (ND highpoint), visit geographic center of US, drive to South Dakota
Monday – Climb Black Elk Peak (SD state highpoint), Wind Cave highpoint
Tuesday – Badlands highpoint, Mt Rushmore
Wednesday – Fly out , Dad starts drive back to KY

Friday

Dad and I left Berea early Friday morning heading north with the blazer packed full of enough food for us to be self sufficient for the next five days. Our goal was to hit a bunch of US National Park highpoints and push dad over the critical 30 state highpoint barrier. Last year  the latest national park was added – Indiana Dunes – making a total of 62 national parks in the country. I’d already climbed most of the park highpoints out west, but was missing a handful in the midwest, so a road trip like this made sense.

We drove north for about six hours until reaching the Pinhook Bog area of Indiana Dunes. This is a small area of woods near a residential neighborhood away from the shore of Lake Michigan, and it’s not immediately obvious why it is included in the park since there are no dunes here. But there is a nice hiking trail that makes a 1.7-mile loop. We got out and started hiking up the Upland Trail following the beta from Gary Neben on peakbagger. We turned left at the only intersection, then about a quarter mile after the intersection at the highpoint of the trail we started bushwhacking into the woods on our left. We picked up an old fence line marking the park boundary and followed this to it’s highest point.

This was the highpoint of Indiana Dunes National Park. There was no cairn or summit register, just some trees and leaves next to a farmers field. We took some pictures and then bushwhacked back to the trail and hiked back to the car. After lunch at a picnic table at the trailhead we drove to the part of the park that actually has sand dunes and admired the view out across Lake Michigan. Unfortunately swimming was prohibited due to Covid.

We soon continued driving through Chicago then north into northern Minnesota. Shortly after midnight we reached Voyageurs National Park near the Canadian border and found a good pullout to camp in.

Saturday

Saturday morning we started up the trail to Voyageurs Highpoint Tower. We parked in a small pullout on Mead Wood Rd just south of the Beaver Pond overlook. It looked like an old road heading up into the woods with a gate in front. There were a few inches of fresh snow on the ground and the temperature was in the teens, but that was much milder conditions than we were expecting in northern Minnesota in late November.

On the way up we saw what might have been wolf tracks, and heard what sounded like a wolf howl. After a half hour we reached the end of the trail at a big radio tower. There weren’t any views, but we took a bunch of pictures of the snowy forest around. We then hiked back down and drove north a mile to Sullivan Bay to look out over the partially-frozen lake.

We then continued driving south and west, passing a few lakes with brave fishermen setting up ice houses. We had lunch at

Lake Bemidji, which was very much not frozen over yet, then continued into North Dakota. By the evening we reached our next destination, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where we found a nice pullout to camp out in the car. We were pretty lucky that there was zero snow on the ground, which seems a bit unusual for late November in North Dakota.

Sunday

In the morning we started hiking from the Old East Entrance hiking trail. The terrain looked a lot like the Badlands of South Dakota, just on a slightly smaller scale. We walked through a very large praire dog village past the remnants of the old east entrance buildings. The trail ended there but we continued following game trails east, switchbacking steeply up the west ridge of Peck Hill. We soon crested the summit plateau, which was a flat expanse of grass.

The game trails petered out here and it wasn’t obvious what the highest point was. We walked to the location marked by peakbagger and tagged a few other candidates before calling it good. I half expected to see a little glass summit register jar placed by John Mitchler like other park highpoints, but couldn’t find anything here. We took some pictures of some wild horses near the summit then retraced our route back to the car.

Next we headed south to hit White Butte, the North Dakota state highpoint. I had previously climbed White Butte in 2011 with Matthew. We were in a hurry on that trip so Dad and my grandpa had waited at the car while Matthew and I ran up to the top and back. This time Dad wanted to make sure to get to the summit to log another state highpoint.

Back in 2011 I recall the access being a bit less certain and Matthew and I had just parked on the side of the road on the east side I believe and ran up and down from there. But nowadays the official trailhead is on the north side. It’s actually even labeled on Google Maps. We made it to the trailhead by early afternoon and parked next to one other car. It was cold and windy, but there was no snow on the ground. We followed a dirt road south for a mile, then went through a gate and followed a good trail. We saw one other hiker coming down, and I think he may have been some sort of caretaker of the trail since he was wearing a bright construction vest and didn’t sign the summit register.

After a mile on the trail we reached the top. It was much more straightforward this time than it had been nine years ago. Views were great of the surrounding prairie in the sunny skies, but it was very cold and windy. I signed us in the register and then we quickly retreated back to the car. This was state highpoint number 31 for Dad.

There was one other item on the agenda for the day, and that was to hit the geographic center of the US. We drove down to northwestern South Dakota, just north of the town of Belle Fourche on 85, then turned onto old us highway 85 and reached a small cairn on the side of the road. We parked and walked through a red gate a hundred feet to find the official USGS survey marker that has the word “center” written on it. There are multiple ways to determine the geographic center of a region, and the USGS uses the definition that the geographic center is the center of gravity of the surface (or the point on which the surface would balance if it were a plane of uniform thickness). So this roughly means there is as much US land north of that point as south, and as much land east as west of that point.

After taking some colorful sunset pictures from the field we continued driving south into the black hills and found a good pullout to camp in near Black Elk Peak, the south dakota state highpoint (formerly known as Harney Peak). I’d already climbed this peak also back in 2011 with Matthew, but as with White Butte we had been in a hurry then and just trail ran up and back while Dad and Grandpa had waited at the car. So we needed to come back so Dad could tag the summit.

Monday

Monday morning we left the Sylvan Lake trailhead shortly after sunrise with only one other car in the lot. The trail started out dry but we soon encountered icy snow on north aspects. It was still no problem in trail runners, though. Eventually we left the snow on the south side of the peak and followed switchbacks up to the summit after about two hours. We had the summit all to ourselves, which was a lot different than back in July 2011.

This time it was much windier and colder, but we hung out in the summit tower admiring the views in the shelter. I ran over to tag McGillicuddy Peak nearby, then we started heading back down. On our way back a bunch of other hikers were starting up, and we reached the trailhead a few hours later.

Next on the agenda was Rankin Ridge, the Wind Cave National Park highpoint. I had been worried that this peak may be difficult to access in late november if roads were snowed over and unplowed, but luckily for us there was zero snow on the roads and the temperatures were in the mid 50s. We drove through Custer State Park on 87 into the park, passed on big lone buffalo resting in the grass, then turned up to the Rankin Ridge trailhead. We hiked a half mile up a trail to reach the summit by late afternoon.

Unfortunately we couldn’t go up the tower, but there was still an excellent view to the east looking at the Badlands. A sign on the summit said the area had Class 1 air quality, which meant views are generally great. We hiked back down to the car just as another hiker was pulling up.

We would have liked to check out the caves which make the park was created for, by the are currently closed due to Covid. So we drove out of the park and headed towards Badlands.

Some online sources state the highpoint of Badlands National Park is the northern entrance of the north unit, but actually there’s a point on the western edge of the park that is a bit higher, called Red Shirt Table. My Dad and I had visited the badlands about 25 years ago on a big road trip, and had done some hiking, but didn’t reach the highest point.

The highpoint is actually just a quarter mile away from a road on the west end of the south unit of the park, and is normally an easy walk through a field to an overlook. But this year access is considerably more difficult. The south unit of the park is within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and members of the reservation have set up checkpoints on all of the roads entering the reservation in response to Covid. It’s questionable whether they are legally allowed to turn cars around on public roads, but the checkpoints are there nevertheless.

We decided to try to enter on the road closest to the highpoint, so we could tag it and drive back out of the reservation without interacting with any people. From Rankin Ridge we drove south and east on gravel roads through the small lonely town of Buffalo Gap and onto the reservation. The road east of Buffalo Gap is very desolate, with no trees, no powerlines, and no houses. Just before sunset we passed through an open gate entering the reservation and thought we had made it through. But a few miles later just as we reached the intersection of route 2 and highway 41 we met a man and a women holding a stop sign in the road.

The women asked where we were going and I said the Badlands. Then she said since we had out of state plates we were not allowed onto the reservation and had to turn around. She looked like she was ready for me to argue but I just said “OK” and turned around. I was sort of expecting this, and Dad and I started thinking of backup plans. We still had a full day before I flew out, so we decided to drive to the north unit of the Badlands, which was off the reservation, camp near there, and figure out a plan the next morning.

I emailed another highpointer Harvey S who had climbed Red Shirt Table and got some very helpful beta on how to get to the summit.  That night we camped out near the north entrance of the park, sleeping in the car.

Tuesday

In the morning we drove through the north unit and I did a short hike where Dad dropped me off at the Door and Window trailhead and I hiked back about 6 miles along the Castle Trail to the Fossil Exhibit trailhead. It was fun, though I regretted my choice of direction because I was hiking directly into a strong headwind the whole time. After the hike we decided to give Red Shirt Table another chance. There were other roads entering the reservation, and maybe we could convince another checkpoint person that we would just be driving through briefly and wouldn’t cause any trouble.

We drove to the small town of Interior then continued south on highway 44. Shortly after crossing onto the reservation we reached another checkpoint. This time the person manning the checkpoint was sitting in his car on the side. We stopped and rolled down the window, but he just waived us through. Could it really be that easy? We were still 85 miles from the highpoint, so I wasn’t about to rest easy.

We drove down a few miles, then turned west on highway 2, following it all the way to highway 41. This was the exact spot we had turned around last time, but now we were on the inside of the checkpoint. We turned north on 41 and luckily the checkpoint people didn’t recognize us. About four miles up the road we pulled off at a small gravel road on the left. Dad stayed in the car while I quickly jogged out across the field on the east side and tagged the highpoint. It was a small local maximum on the edge of a steep dropoff overlooking some impressive Badlands formations.

I wished I could have stayed longer admiring the view, but didn’t want to risk someone getting mad at me. So I jogged back to the car. Just as I got in the car the sheriff drove by, but he didn’t stop so it appears we were doing nothing wrong. Or maybe he thought we’d just stopped so I could go to the bathroom.

To exit the reservation we certainly didn’t want to drive out the checkpoint we’d gotten stopped at the previous night since they might recognize us, so we drove north through red shirt and were easily waived through.

With the remaining daylight we drove over to Mt Rushmore, then drove up to Iron Mountain to camp out for the night. The next morning I flew back from Rapid City and Dad started driving back to Kentucky.

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