venturing4th: Buckhorn Trail

Monday, June 1, 2015

Buckhorn Trail

Blog for May 30-

“Are you ready for a 12 mile trail?”, Frederick greeted me this morning. The Buckhorn Trail is listed at 12.2 miles, but since we began from our campsite, instead of the trailhead parking lot located at the entrance to the campground, we needed to add on another 1.4 miles. Sure, we were ready.

Described on the topographic map as "a moderately easy route through sagebrush flats and badlands" we thought it would be just a long loop walk. The trail crosses, or touches, the scenic drive in a number of places.

Here’s the trail on the topo map. The big dashed loop that extends into the wilderness area and then drops down below the scenic drive to follow the Little Missouri River. Our campground is in the lower left of the picture with the 4 icons near the loopy road.

This sign was at the trailhead up by the Visitor Center. I don’t know if we would have attempted the trail if we had seen this sign at the beginning of the hike instead of almost at the end.

The main issue for us was that at several sections of the trial we were some of the first people to travel the trail after the winter and the ravages of snow and rain had altered the trail and it was difficult to find our way. Some of the signposts were missing and the bison and other animals establish other trails and can lead you to believe you are on the hiking trail, but you are actually following a game trail. There were several places where we had to wander around until we found the trail post or, in some places, someone had tied pink plastic ribbon to trees and bushes to show the way.

But it was a beautiful trail.

We passed two separate prairie dog towns. You might be able to see them on the map. One in the upper left and one huge one just about in the center of the picture. These prairie dogs are always charming and entertaining.