Three days and two nights backpacking hike in the Black Hills.

Today we leave on a hike that will have us backpacking.  It is something that we have not done since we have been married.

We have all the gear.  Modern packs, sleeping bags, and tents that are so much lighter than they were when we were kids.

This hike will take us up a mile of the Centennial Trail to Grizzly Bear Creek trail. We will take that trail a little over 6 miles and climb about 2,000 feet in elevation.  Along that trail, we will setup camp and stay overnight.  The next day we will hike up to Norbeck Trail and follow it to the branch that will take us to the Cathedral Spires.  Then we will move further down the Norbeck Trail and find a place to camp for our second night.  The last night we will return to the trailhead and truck.  Total we should travel about 14 miles.

My backpack started at 35 pounds and Shawna's at 30.

We have a new tech gadget to keep us safe.  You know us plan, backup plan, emergency plan, emergency backup plan....  Anyway we have a Satellite emergency SOS device.  It is called a Garmin InReach Mini and we can call for help, send and receive text messages over satellite. We have three message we can send that are pre-written we can send for free but any other text messages cost us to send or receive. That reminds me of the early days of cell phones. Does anyone remember having to keep track of how many text messages they have left for the month?

​Now, we have a way to call from help anywhere we can see sky.

To our surprise on the drive to the trailhead, we came upon Bighorn Sheep at the same location in Custer State Park.  This time there were even more females and babies.

Time to get to the trailhead.  We parked the truck at the trail parking area.  It is just outside the horse camping area.  I think we will be have horses pass us on some of the hike.

We will be hiking through a big portion of the National Forest.

Time to get going.  We have about 4 or 5 miles up a mountain to hike before we reach our stop for the night.  We will have a lot of water crossings.  It does mean we will have water we can filter along the way.

Yes, we have a filter that can make stream water clean and safe to drink.  The Sawyer filters are really good but intended for camping not as a home filter.  I guess you could make it a home filter but it needs to be backflushed every few days.

The views along the trail are great.

Time to switch to our next trail.

Later in the day we found our campsite.  Just a patch of flat ground but very nice views.  We also could see some clouds building up so the tent needed to be up soon.

We have been watching the forecast for any problems and it predicted NO RAIN.  Of course, a weather forecast is only a bit better than a guess over a couple of days out.  Don't even get me started on how ridiculous it is for "scientists" to try to predict a change in the climate many years from now.

We were able to utilize some rocks as some of our tie downs.  They worked great.

Time to get some water and make dinner.  The creek is just a 100 feet further down the trail and dinner is freeze dried.

Rain but we are ready.

On a bolder near our campsite was a natural bonsai.

Our views at sunset.  Pretty!

Morning comes early in the morning.  This is our view at 5:30am.  It has been light enough to not need a flashlight for over an hour.  The sun peeked over the mountains at about 6:30am.  Our coffee with breakfast was fantastic!  Thank you, Julie and Matt,  the filter worked great!

On with the hike.

We did have a lot of pretty flowers on the hike.

Pretty brooks and streams.

We got to the high point in our hike and the view was fantastic.

We could see Cathedral Spires in the distance. The trail to them is fairly short so we "stash" (hide them off trail) our packs. ​

As we hiked, we passed through a part of the forest where instead of grass the ground was covered in a moss.  The patch of moss covered the ground for hundreds of feet up the hillside.

Everything you see green growing across the ground above is a moss.

The Spires are really impressive.

We switch to our final trail back to the truck.

We found our campsite for tonight.  It is a big meadow of tall grass so we have to do a dance to press it down where we setup the tent.

The results in the morning are that it looks like an elephant took a nap.

We enjoyed the hike but now it is time to return to civilization, showers and a visit to the hot tub at the RV Park to workout the sore muscles.  Mainly we need showers.