2024 Black Hills Bounty (Day 7) - Going Home

Well, I'm going home, back to the place where I belong

And where your love has always been enough for me.

I'm not running from, no, I think you got me all wrong.

I don't regret this life I chose for me.

But these places and these faces are getting old,

So, I'm going home.

Home, Chris Daughtry (2007).

Emerging from Lost Canyon onto Old Baldy Road (USFS Low Standard Road 633.1).
(image by Luke Derstein)

Day 7 of the 2024 Black Hills Bounty.

Rapid City, South Dakota is my home and the Black Hills are my backyard. Riding into the Hills for a day, a week, or longer isn't leaving home for me.

But it is for the rest of the crew on the Bounty. They all traveled hundreds of miles from their regular lives with families and friends in Nebraska and Kansas, just to ride together for a week in the Black Hills. 

So, on Day 7, they're going home.

Descending out of Lost Canyon on an abandoned road. 
(image by Paul Brasby)

Camping at the bottom of a narrow canyon makes for a memorable evening, but also a cold morning. So, we break camp quickly and layer up for the relatively short, (mostly) downhill ride into Spearfish. We're rolling down Lost Canyon long before the first direct sunlight reaches our site.

As customary, the final day of the Bounty is, at most, a half-day so the crew can start their drive home. But this is still the Black Hills Bounty, which means a mix of challenging near-roads, USFS Low Standard, Secondary, and Primary Roads, and maybe even some pavement. And at least one steep pitch. Well, just because.

Tracking another unnumbered road along Beaver Creek.
(image by Paul Brasby)

In no time, the crew drops out of Lost Canyon and onto Old Baldy Road (USFS Low Standard Road 633.1) and then Schoolhouse Gulch Road (USFS Secondary Road 222). The reprieve on that moderately developed road is very short, however, as we immediately turn onto another unmarked, unnumbered, barely two-track winding up a valley alongside Beaver Creek.

Just as the crew settles into a rhythm on that rough near-road, we turn ninety degrees to face a climb directly up to a distant ridge line. Looking up that steep, loose, rough two track is a bit daunting, especially on a loaded bikepacking bike. But all it really takes is a little focus and a little patience. And a willful ignorance of speed.

Bounty riders prepare for a 90 degree turn onto a steep pitch directly up to a ridge line.
(image by Paul Brasby)

Smooth ridge line cruising on USFS Low Standard Road 130.
(image by Paul Brasby)

Cresting that pitch, we t-bone into a curiously well built and maintained USFS Low Standard Road 130, which rides much more like a solid Secondary Road. Many roads and trails branch off this road as it follows along a nice ridge line. Now, we're cruising.

But we're not done yet. We eventually turn off USFS Low Standard Road 130 onto another one of those unnumbered, unmarked two track near-roads for a rollicking two mile descent that's just rough enough to keep your attention. Too soon, we drop onto Higgins Gulch Road (USFS Secondary Road 214) for the final, champagne gravel road into Spearfish. 

Loading up Paul's toy hauler at Rushmore Bikes in Spearfish.
(image by Luke Derstein)

All loaded up for the drive home.

The sun never did warm up those canyons and gulches we descended that morning. We were cold when finally stopping at Rushmore Bikes in Spearfish. Hard to believe that we started this trip a week ago in the blazing oven of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands.

After a quick change into warmer traveling clothes, we load up bikes and gear in Paul's toy hauler and hit the open road. 

They're going home.

Addendum. Here's a link to the Black Hills Bounty Page, which describes and links all blog post for every post for every year of this ride (2021-present). Black Hills Bounty Page.

Home, Daughtry (2007).