Rain, Wind and Clay

The Badlands National Park in South Dakota is visited by over 871,000 people per year. The majority spend an average of 5 hours, driving the scenic loop, hiking the short side trails and strolling through the visitor center.

A small minority stay a night or two in the National Park Campground, many in monstrous campers, and hike the longer trails up into the canyons. An even luckier minority do so during and after a torrential thunderstorm. S.D. and I now consider ourselves among those lucky few.

Arriving Friday morning, and lucky we did as the one campground filled to capacity by early evening, we set up camp and explored the visitor center and side trails, planning to hike the longer hikes on Saturday.

The Visitor Center had a great exhibit on the geology and paleontology of the area. There was a lot of attention given to the roll that rain erosion plays in the formation of the spires, pinnacles and canyons. Every rain storm washing away significant amounts of the sand, clay and other sedimentary rocks layed down over the previous 67 million years. The clay is especially prevalent and, they warned, makes hiking after rain, extremely difficult and slippery.

That night, we woke up around 2 am, just as the rain started and the wind tried to flatten our tent on top of us. We spent the next hour, inside the tent, holding up the sides. S.D. on the South East corner, me on the South West. There was one moment when pushing out against the wind with both hands and my head that I suggested we might have to abandon ship and seek refuge in Bruce (the van). Other campers were taking that options and we could see head lights as some just up and drove away. But we held fast and eventually the storm blew over.

The next morning, after picking up the pieces, stringing some clothes lines to dry off some bedding, we drove down to the trailhead, where again the signs warned that hiking after rain could be extremely difficult. Sure, we noted, the rain last night was hard, but it's been dry now for over 6 hours, the trail should be fine.

The first half mile of the trail rises straight up. I think the entire trail was nothing but clay. Wet,
slippery, clay. Luckily the clay trail was in a little trough so you could also use your hands and establish three points of contact before moving your foot up a step. And with each step your foot also got a little heavier, since it picked up a fair amount of clay. At one point I just stopped, scrapped the dirt/clay off my hand and rolled a perfect red clay bead.

At the summit the trail took a four mile loop around the flat top of the mesa and we figured the walk would be easier. It was, but...it was still really slippery. The ground was still holding water, as clay soils do, and with every step there was a slide. Some little, some not so little. The hike also took us through a few sloughs along the mesa. Here the clay soil held all the water and formed pools. After attempting to circumnavigate around a few of these, we eventually had to give up and just plow through the middle. It was slightly surreal, hiking in a desert, 80 degrees heat, in water up to our knees.

Throughout the hike S.D. would remind me of the exhibit in the visitor center and remark on how much the water did change the landscape, just one rain fall had moved a significant amount of the Badlands, and it was obvious everywhere.

Back at the campsite, as we tried to save our boots from becoming pottery, the wind picked up again. Not that it ever had really died, and I was reminded of the some movie. A western, the beleaguered homesteading wife wringing her hands by the cabin door and crying about the wind. The wind. It's always blowing and after only two days, I could see her point.

We broke camp (see, I'm even picking up the lingo) early the next morning, just as a few rain drops fell, and the wind lifted the western corner of the tent, warning us of another impending storm.

The park is a beautiful but difficult place, that's probably why it is a park, but as we drove out of the park towards Rapid City it was beautiful.  A reminder that the great State of South Dakota is a varying place and is worth a visit.  As we continue our exploration of our new state of residence, it is becoming plain that South Dakota wouldn't be a bad place to stay a while.  Something we didn't expect.