The plan for Sunday was easy. Drive the Needles Highway, eat a burger at Sylvan Lake, walk the flat little loop around the water, and be at Mount Rushmore by evening.
Then we tacked on a second trail without reading a single word about it. Between the two of us we had about half a bottle of water, one granola bar, and no phone signal. The trail was four miles. The sign at the other end, which we read at the very end, called it moderate.
We disagree.
Squeezing through the Needles
The Needles Highway is a stretch of South Dakota Highway 87 through Custer State Park, and the part everybody talks about is the tunnels. They are cut straight through rock and they are narrow.
The Needle's Eye tunnel is 8 feet wide and 9 feet 9 inches high. We have a big truck. Going through it was genuinely tense, with Fabiola counting us down and both of us watching the mirrors. We fit. We did not love it. If you are towing anything at all, check those posted dimensions before you commit, because there is no backing out of one of those once you are in.
Instead of running the whole route we stopped at Sylvan Lake, which was the right call.
Sylvan Lake, a bison burger, and about 100 degrees
Sylvan Lake has everything: parking, food, restrooms, a gift shop, and a flat loop trail around the water.
Nathan had a bison burger. His review, in full: it tastes like bison.
The lake trail itself is easy, and Fabiola made the point that there is nothing wrong with that. Not every hike has to be a fight. The rock formations around the lake are the sort of thing that make you stop walking, and Nathan spent a while convinced they looked like Galaxy's Edge at Disney's Hollywood Studios, then worked out he had it backwards and the theme park was copying this.
It was around 100 degrees. That will matter shortly.
"Should we add the other trail?"
Partway around the lake a second trail branches off, and Fabiola suggested we add a bit of it. Just a bit. It looked shaded and cooler, and after an hour in direct sun that was persuasive.
We knew it was four miles. We did not read the description. We did not know the elevation, or where it came out, or that we were about to walk it in the direction most people do not.
Going backwards turned out to have one real advantage: the big views arrive early instead of at the end. It also meant we went down first, which is the part that gets you.
Down into the boulders
The trail drops into a gulch full of boulders, and it drops fast.
The rocks are slick, there is a creek running alongside the whole way, and in the worst sections the state has bolted steel handrails into the granite. Those bars are the only reason some of it is walkable. We spent a good stretch of it hauling ourselves along by our arms, testing each rail before trusting it, stepping on stone rather than on the wooden sections that have started to go soft.
Somewhere in there the honest conversation happened, which was that neither of us knew where this trail ended and walking back would take longer than finishing it. That is the point where a hike stops being optional.
The conversation that made it worth it
About halfway through, deep in the gulch, we stopped talking about the trail.
Nathan said the views were good but that the actual point was the time with Fabiola, and it turned into a conversation about why we like working in the same room even when we are doing completely separate things. Fabiola brought up something she had read about having a safe person, someone whose presence is enough on its own without any activity attached to it. That is it. That is what quality time means for both of us, and it took a hike neither of us planned to say it out loud.
It is the part of the day we would keep if we could only keep one part.
What was actually in the backpack
Not much.
One bottle of water between two people. A small granola bar. No signal, though newer phones still have satellite SOS, which somebody pointed out to us on YouTube once and which we have never had to test. The multi-tool has a compass and paracord, so in the disaster scenario we could have rigged a shelter or a fishing line. No flint.
We spent a while joking about which overhang we would camp under, and there was one that would genuinely work. The joke gets less funny when the water runs low and you are still going up.
If you do this trail, bring more water than we did. That is not a tip, that is a correction.
The climb back up
The return leg goes up, and it goes up for a long time.
Fabiola's knee and back were both complaining, the flies find you the second you stop moving, and the water was gone by the time we could see the highway. We passed a medallion marker along the way for the Custer State Park trail challenge, which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day and rewards hikers who finish a set number of the park trails. Our friends at Open Roading had done the park trails before us, which is how we heard about these in the first place.
Whose idea was this got answered as 52 percent Fabiola, 50 percent Nathan, and neither of us corrected the math.
At the top there is a gift shop. Water cost $10 and was worth every cent.
Then we read the sign
At the trailhead, the proper one, there is a sign.
Sunday Gulch Trail. Four miles. Rated moderate. An estimated time range that we had come in at the low end of, at somewhere between two and three hours, depending on which of us you ask.
Moderate is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Custer State Park's own lodge company rates this trail strenuous, which matches our experience considerably better than the trailhead sign does. It is a real scramble with handrails and slick rock and a serious climb, and starting it in 100 degree heat without water is on us, not on the park. Read the description. That is the whole lesson and we paid full price for it.
Mount Rushmore after everything closes
We got to Mount Rushmore at 6:30, which we can now report is a mixed strategy.
Good news: it is not busy. Parking is easy, and there is no entrance fee at all, just $10 to park, and that ticket is good for a full year. The faces are, as Fabiola noted, open 24 hours, on the grounds that they do not close their eyes to sleep.
Bad news: anywhere in that region after 5 p.m., there is no food. None. The gift shop was open with a line. We had done a four mile scramble on one granola bar and there was nothing to eat within reach, which is also probably why the place was so quiet.
The thing that saved Nathan's back
Back at the rig he finally opened the Bob and Brad ThermoRed, which is a back belt that does heat, vibration, and red light in one unit, with a two year warranty and a battery that charges in about four hours.
After a day of scrambling plus a long drive, having something you can strap on and then just sit still with is the right kind of product. He did not need the extender, which he was quietly pleased about.
Bob and Brad sponsored that segment of the video, and the link in our description is also an affiliate link, so we earn a small commission if you buy through it at no extra cost to you. The ThermoRed is here and the code BBTHERMORED takes 10 percent off.
What we would do differently
Read the trail description. Carry more than one bottle of water in 100 degree heat. Eat before 5 p.m. anywhere in the Black Hills.
Then we ate pizza, then salad, then more pizza, in that order, which was also Fabiola's idea and a much better one.
None of which we regret, because the plan we made in the morning was not as good as the day we actually had. The rest of this stretch is in our Wind Cave and Crazy Horse day, and the leg that got us to South Dakota is in the 600 mile run to the Badlands. We send a short newsletter every Saturday about where we are and what broke that week.