Bushwhacking

Uncharacteristically, I wanted to stay home this weekend. Maybe it was the arrival of the satellite TV; I also just wanted to sleep in in my own bed for once. So Luke and I invited some of the fellas out to Pine Ridge for the evening. The original plan involved camping--this could be the last good camping weekend--but I was feeling like sitting around the house, so I managed to convince everyone to enjoy an evening in out of the cold. We took the scenic route out to Interior, where we bought some overpriced meat, then came back to feast on steak, onion rings, pumpkin pie, and beer while watching the Tigers blow it.

On the ride out to Interior we scouteed out some of the local Badlands. In the morning, after a pancake breakfast, we decided to head back out that way to do some exploration. I was nervous about leaving my car lying around; apparently at one point, on a field trip out that way, a school vehicle had its tires slashed, and I've heard stories of car windows being smashed in while people have been out for twenty minute walks. But we figured we could stick in sight of the car.

The mesa in the background here is what we first decided to check out. I drove as far as this picture, but the road got a little too rough here, so I decidd to leave the car. It would have made the perfect Suburu commercial, with the car parked on the perfect outcropping in a rugged landscape.


The mesa wasn't actually all that exciting, but there was a nice view down into some of the Badlands.


"The Pyramid":


"The Lost Valley." There is a big drop off down the rocks into the big valley with more Badlands off on the other side. It's the kind of place that feels totally undiscovered, the kind o place where in a movie we might discover dinosaurs still roaming. Of course, later on a found a Budweiser can that someone had tossed down the rocks.


Eventually we decided that the mesa wasn't exciting enough. I was nervous about my car, but I did want to check out the valley. We found a shallow spot in the cliff face where we could make our way down, which brought us into a patch of woods, and then we made our way down another set of rocks. Here are Ryan, Luke, and Russ making the final climb down. According to Russ's GPS thingie, it was a 200 foot elevation change from top to bottom. So not very much, but it felt big.


From the top the valley looked entirely open and expensive. Down at the bottom, with formations on all sides, it feels much more enclosed. We just tracked our progress with the GPS tracker and wandered around, feeling very remote.


There were a few signs of wildlife. Here was a monster spider we found. Apparently the Lakota trickster can take the form of this spider. Was this a sign that my tires would be smashed? Luckily, no.


We spotted a set of vertebrae at one point, and then found lots more bones scattered about, which indicated that the scavengers had taken care of the body. We were wondering what kind of animal it was. Then Luke spotted this skull, which allowed some of the more skilled members of our crew to identify the bones as belonging to a coyote. This skull is now sitting on my bedroom floor, waiting to be bleached for display. Later Luke spotted some antlers, which he also kept.


As we made our way around this big formation, I spotted a decent size buck up on the rocks. It's in the picture but it's pretty hard to spot. It's sort of right in the middle of the picture, just up off the grass. I tried to chase after it, but apparently deer are faster than me.


We had seen something that looked like a cave from the top of the mesa, so we decided to walk all the way around the formation to check it out. It was just a spot where a hole had been eroded a few feet deep. Here are the guys checking out the Badlands.


At this point we looked at the GPS tracker and realized that our starting point was right on the other side of these rocks. We decided that, rather than walking all the way back around, we would see if it was possible to climb up and over to the other side. The only significant problem was Ryan's shoes, whose tread had worn too smooth to really scramble up very well.


Making it down the other side.


We decided to revive our camping plans for this weekend. Damn the cold; we're going to backpack down Saturday morning with gear, set up a base camp, and then spend Saturday exploring the valley.