Thousands gathered to watch the 51st annual Buffalo Roundup last weekend at Custer State Park. Employees and volunteers corralled about 1,200 bison for branding, vaccination and pregnancy checks. Between 200 and 500 will be auctioned off on November 19 to help manage the herd size and generate money for park operations. Photos by Joel Schwader.
Spearfish Canyon is a favorite fall foliage destination for South Dakotans and out of state visitors. Jerry Boyer, who has tracked the progression of fall colors in Spearfish Canyon for over 20 seasons, says the peak viewing time should be today and Tuesday.
“I do not remember a fall so beautiful. The yellows and golds are so vivid and the reds, oranges and purples so brilliantly plentiful,” Boyer says. “It’s amazing that primarily only four leafy tree-types can create such awesome splendor and excitement. The colorful trees are highlighted by the sharp contrast of the dark emerald-green pine and spruce evergreens.” But Boyer warns to beware of the alluring red leaves near the ground — they are poison ivy.
John Mitchell visited the canyon this past weekend. Here are some of his photos.
Lightning sparked a fire that blazed across Crow Peak near Spearfish from June 24 into July, burning more than 2,700 acres and temporarily closing its trail. John Mitchell recently explored the popular path, much of it now running through a direct burn area. The forest service urges visitors to stay on the trail due to unstable trees.
Our July/August issue includes a story on bouldering — a blend of gymnastics and rock climbing — in the Black Hills. Stephen Gassman took photos of the adventure sport and even gave it a try. Here are some of his photos that didn’t make the magazine.
This spring I was able to do something I had been wanting to for some time. From Memorial Day weekend to mid-June, the fine folks of Sylvan Lake Lodge of Custer State Park allowed me to sit in as an artist in residence. I got to meet folks from all over the county in the afternoons and evenings. Then was free to roam the area with my camera at night and morning. Two full weeks wandering the Black Hills area is a great gig for a guy and his camera. Believe me.
I love to visit this part of the state in spring. There are wildflowers on the prairie hillsides and newborn wildlife to be seen in prairie dog towns and bison herds. This spring was a little on the dry side so the flowers were a bit harder to find. Even so, there was still plenty of color flying through the air with brilliant mountain bluebirds, red-headed woodpeckers and so much more. It also seemed to be butterfly season. I hiked Hell Canyon near Jewel Cave and was rewarded by seeing one of the largest concentrations of Eastern swallowtail butterflies as well as the all-black American swallowtail.
The real treat for me, however, was hanging out at Sylvan Lake and watching the sky change over one of South Dakota’s prettiest bodies of water. From storm clouds in the afternoon to vivid sunsets in the evening, the view never gets old. Towards the end of my stay, I witnessed an incredible lightning storm approach the lake right as daylight faded. It was calm and cool after a warm day. The music of distant thunder rumbling over the hills and faint scent of rain on the breeze still lingers in my memory. Moments like that aren’t few and far between at Sylvan Lake. Maybe that is why it is such a magical place.
Speaking of magic, one of my favorite drives in the world is Highland Ridge Road to Red Valley Road in the northern part of Wind Cave National Park. At early morning or late evening light, you almost always see something amazing. Elk move out into the prairie and coyotes sing to each other while moving through the prairie dog towns. Pronghorn and bison use the road and sometimes walk within a few feet of my vehicle, allowing for interesting close-up photos. One morning this time around, I was lucky to spot a burrowing owl pair in a ridge-top prairie dog town. One was flying scout and the other was in an old burrow with its head not quite halfway out. The owl slowly levitated upwards for about 20 minutes until I could see its whole body, all the while looking towards me with a suspicious eye. When I opened my door to get a better angle the pair flew off to a safer perch. I figured I’d bothered them long enough and decided to move on. Even so, spending an unexpected half hour with these unique birds was magical. As was my two weeks in the area. There’s truly nothing like the Black Hills in spring.
Crews continue to battle a fire started on Crow Peak near Spearfish last Friday. An estimated 1,000 acres have burned and the blaze is still uncontained. The lightning-caused fire is largely fueled by pockets of dead ponderosa pine brought down by pine beetles. Abnormally dry and warm spring and summer weather has also been a factor.
Crow Peak is a favorite of local hiking enthusiasts. The summit provides an expansive view of the Black Hills, Montana and West River’s plains and Wyoming’s Bearlodge Mountains.
Photos by John Mitchell.
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| Kayakers float past the rocky shores of Sylvan Lake. Granite surrounding the lake is over 1.7 billion years old. |
Dramatic granite spires border several Black Hills lakes, adding an atmosphere of permanence and serenity. Kelly Lane of Rapid City has been floating beneath the granite for over 50 years. But the veteran kayaker knows better than most of us that nothing lasts forever.
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| Kelly Lane credits kayaking for keeping him out of a wheelchair. |
Lane was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 21 years ago. Today, at age 64, he credits his passion for kayaking as the reason he isn’t in a wheelchair full-time.”You have to reassess your life when you have Parkinson’s to find value in it, because it takes away what appears to be valuable for you. I refuse to allow it to do that. I have to find value in my life.”
Lane taught science for 20 years before Parkinson’s forced him to retire. Kayaking our mountain waters has been his salvation. He began the sport when he was just 12 years old. He wrote a guidebook in 2013 and is bursting with knowledge on all Black Hills waterways.
Even though most of the lakes are manmade, he says a Black Hills kayaker sometimes feels as if he’s a frontier explorer because of the solitude, framed by rock and pines. As the seasons change, he says,”There is always something new to marvel at, a different angle of light, a new beaver dam, a newly downed tree.”
Thirty-three lakes are hidden in the deep valleys of the Black Hills. Five are natural; most of the rest were formed by dams built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Lane says every drop of water in the Black Hills eventually drains into the Cheyenne River as it flows northeasterly to the Missouri.
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| Matt Howards, of Madison, Wis., lands a rainbow trout on Coxes Lake just outside of the Black Hills. |
Lane loves kayaking the lakes because of the solitude.”There are so many lakes around the hills and so few people that, when paddling on them, you almost never have to share the lake with another boat,” he says. He often kayaks with his wife, Becky, a math teacher and avid outdoorswoman, and their twin daughters.
Sylvan Lake is a frequent destination.”It’s just beautiful. There’s no shore, it’s just lined with rock. But then you can go down the road to Legion Lake and there is mud and soft grass surrounding the lake. Completely different. And Coxes Lake sits just outside the Black Hills but you feel like you’re in the middle of the prairie.”
Lane’s favorite is Pactola, the largest reservoir in the Hills.”It’s our home lake. We paddle it in all seasons, even sliding on the ice in the winter. We paddle it all hours of the day and night, between dawn paddles, night paddles, and daytime uses. We teach on it, practice on it, race on it and relax on it,” he says.
Pactola is also a favorite of kayak instructor Chad Andrew, a friend of Lane.”Most of the wildlife I have seen has been at Pactola,” Andrew says. He’s spotted osprey (there is a nesting pair at Pactola), blue heron, mink, muskrat, coyote, deer, bald and golden eagles and other bird species.
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| Sylvan Lake is the oldest reservoir in the Hills. |
Andrew guides students up Rapid Creek, which flows into Pactola near Silver City, for beginning whitewater instruction.”The further up you paddle the more intense the current will get until you can’t paddle upstream any further,” he says. To get near the creek, Andrew recommends accessing the Jenny Gulch area and then following the cove to the right toward the cliff jumping area. You will have to paddle a half-mile before you see the lake thin into Rapid Creek.
Pactola and Sheridan are great lakes for beginners, but Andrew recommends all kayakers take a safety course before getting on the water. He takes safety seriously. His brother was killed while kayaking at the Potomac Falls near Washington, D.C. Andrew is certified with the American Canoe Association as a Level 4 whitewater kayaking instructor. Both Lane and Andrew are members of a group advocating for a paddle park by M Hill in Rapid City, near the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. They believe a man-made kayaking area will offer a safe, controlled environment for tubers and kayakers.
Quickly changing weather is the biggest danger for kayakers on the usually calm Hills lakes. One year, Andrew was caught in a hailstorm while on Pactola.”By the time I reached my car, vehicles were damaged and windows were broken out,” he says. Luckily, he always wears a helmet to be a good example to his students.”With golf ball sized hail, it was a definite bonus to have my helmet,” he says.
Every spring, as ice recedes from the lakes, Lane returns to the water. Parkinson’s has robbed him of other outdoor interests like running and skiing, but friends help him continue to kayak.”Someone will say ‘I’m heading to this spot’ and I’ll just ask them to pick me up.” The disease has changed him, Lane says, but not in the ways you might think.”Parkinson’s doesn’t slow me down, it changes my pace. It doesn’t take things away, it makes me choose other things.”
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
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| Jarrett Dahl is set to begin his ninth summer of chainsaw art in the Black Hills. |
When Jarrett Dahl looks at a log, he sees more than just a log. He sees into the log. Possibilities lurk — like woodland creatures yearning to be freed from timber prisons, by sharknadoes of razor-sharp Husqvarna teeth.
Dahl’s received some recognition for his vision. The Orlando, Florida Ripley’s Believe It Or Not houses his massive sculpture, carved from a monster cottonwood, of an eagle easy-riding an asphalt-hugging hawg. He’s recreated the eagle rider as a fixture at his Keystone shop.
Dahl was raised in Dawson, Minnesota. When he was 18, he went fishing for a couple weeks in the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. While there, a high school friend’s uncle — Scott Hanson, a well-known chainsaw artist in Soldotna — introduced him to the art form. A couple weeks turned into a summer. Dahl was carving bear’s heads out of stumps in no time, and kept going back the next three summers.
In Jarrett’s eighteenth winter, he started experimenting with selling wares in the lower 48 — at a craft mall in Branson, Missouri. “I took a trip out there with my family,” he says, “and they left me there and said good luck. I met another wood carver out there that took me in and helped me out a little bit and I was able to prove to my Dad that I could make a decent living. So I just kept doing it.”
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| A smaller version of his eagle rider. The larger sculpture resides in a Florida museum. |
Between summers in Alaska he tried a shop in St. Cloud, Minnesota. In 2006, he tried his first Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and found a niche. He’s been to every rally since. His Sturgis success led to the summer store in Keystone, then to a Hill City shop run by his younger brother Jordan. Over the last seven years, he’s run winter shops in Palm Desert, California, then Aspen, Colorado.
As Dahl’s Chainsaw Art gets set to open in Keystone and Hill City for its ninth Black Hills summer, this time the brothers plan to stay put well past first frost. “This will be my first winter in South Dakota,” Dahl says. “I’m just going to try to make a go of it, try to build up as much inventory as I can. It’s kind of nice, because there are no people here, I’m able to get projects done. I appreciate both times of the year.”
Even as the paint dries on the sign out front, the Keystone shop is already a woodland Shangri-la in the presidents’ shadow. Eagles roost regally or lock beaks in arrested free-fall. There are bears and bears of course. A 16-foot warrior reaches skyward, Minions stand poised to give the people what they want. A Tlingit-influenced totem could trace a line to that first Soldotna summer. What might nine winters bring?
Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.
Mark Rafferty is a young rock climber, photographer and artist from Rapid City. Last November, serious injuries from a 40-foot fall near Tucson sidelined the teen, but he returned to climbing this spring. Here are some recent photos from his climbs in the Black Hills. See more of his work and follow his blog at www.markcrafferty.com.
Our May/June issue includes a feature on unique museums in West River South Dakota. We gathered several photos of our most eclectic collections. Here are some photos that didn’t make the magazine.
