General Custer famously attempted to ride his horse to the summit, but did not quite make it. "And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being."īlack Elk Peak has served witness to a wide variety of historical events and people. "I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world," he is quoted as saying. As he evolved into a respected elder and medicine man, he would recount his vision: It was atop this peak that a young Black Elk experienced a vision when he was merely nine years old. Located adjacent to Sylvan Lake, the granite high point is sacred ground to Native Americans, especially the Sioux. At 7,242 feet, Black Elk Peak is the highest point in South Dakota and is also the highest point east of the Colorado Rockies. The change in namesake was to honor Nicholas Black Elk and to recognize the significance of the peak to Native Americans. I didn’t catch that photo but here is the tunnel with a regular car.For over 150 years, the highest point in South Dakota known as Harney Peak. At one of the tunnels there was a traffic jam caused by a huge bus scraping through. We left Sylvan Lake via the needles highway on the way to Rapid City. Of course, pack out all your trash, including TP. We didn’t have any bug problems, shorts and light hikers were fine. There are no facilities on the trail, bring water & food. The trail is identified by blazes on trees along the trail, but honestly #9 is so straight forward you should have no trouble. Parking at the Sylvan Lake Day Use area is $20.00/car. Our total Loop hike time was Just over 4 hours, not including the hour we spent between the top of Black Elk, Cathedral Spires and Lil Devils. Finally, we were back at the parking lot at 2:20 pm. It took us 30 minutes to hike from the spur up to the top of Little Devils Tower, and 30 minutes back to Trail #4. It took us just over an hour to reach the Little Devils tower spur with a long photo stop at the Cathedral Spires. We started up at 9:15 am and made the summit in 1 hour 45 minutes, with photo op stops. In our estimation, detours made our Loop route about 8 miles. The round trip distance on Trail #9 is about 6.8 miles. The trail head to Black Elk Peak sits at about 6,145 ft, for an elevation gain of just over 1,550 ft to the top. Our feet were hot and we wanted to dip them in the lake!īlack Elk Peak sits at 7,242 ft above sea level, it is the 15th highest state summit of the US state highpoints. We headed back to the car – and this was when we were bummed out by the first parking lot. Kerry and I gazed for 10 minutes and slid/climbed back down to meet Jason. We left Jason and his poor knees at the bottom of the rock (I left my camera with him, so I missed out on the photos). It only takes about 10 minutes to finish the climb from there. After 20 minutes on the trail you come to the bottom of a rock and the trail goes straight up. About 5 minutes further we came to the spur to Little Devils Tower.
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