April 17, 2012

The wind is picking up to a gale as I write this. Saw the storms moving in while hiking this afternoon, and happily we made it out in time. Steven and I set out about 10:00 this morning to go hike some of the areas around Cedar Pass. Started at Old NE Road, parked, and walking across from the road to the rocks and began to climb. What ensued was a six hour hike up canyon after canyon, finally leading us up to the very top of some extremely tall buttes. We looked over, and surprise: there's cliff shelf trail right down on the other side, way down there. Like reaching Harney Peak, only on a bit of a smaller scale. 360 degrees of views across the Badlands and beyond. Angel Butte, the visitor's center, and the quad were all visible, far below. It was fabulous. From up there, we decided to attempt a different way down, and hope that this other canyon would remain passable. If not, we'd just have to climb back up and over to where we came up. In the end it worked out, and we had a full day of no backtracking, all new territory. Pretty cool. I also found lots of fossils, most I could identify (oreodont and tortoise), but I have a couple I took pictures of that look great but are a mystery to me. Will show Ed and see what he says.

Intact fossil tortoise, hard to make out, but there's a
brownish ring of material in a big circle through the photo.

After hiking up the first couple levels.

Artists in Residence playing around.

Oreodont jaw fragment.

View down a canyon, this is the one we hiked back out through.

Looking up.

Further in the canyon.

Lots of big boulders.
As we went further in, we had to scramble more.

Trying a side canyon for a way up.

Starting up another side canyon; this one worked.

The last bit to climb, vertical and a bit tricky.

The view from above. These next 8 photos are a panorama.
If you look hard, the visitor center is in the middle here.
Angel Butte is left center, quad behind there.