On Sunday afternoon, three of us hiked the Sunday Gulch trail in Custer State Park. My wife has an ongoing problem with her ankle that causes her a lot of pain. She was OK with the relatively flat trail around Devil’s Tower, but couldn’t handle the climbing and uneven surfaces on this one.
The trail starts at the base of the dam on Sylvan Lake and goes straight down through a boulder field. The “path” is a handrail made of metal pipe that winds down, through and over the huge rocks.
We finally stopped going down. The trail ran through some quiet woods for a spell. We met two older couples in this stretch, walking the trail in the other direction. They asked us how the trail was ahead, and I told them it was steep and rough. They already looked winded, and I wondered how they were going to make it up that boulder field.
The whole time we were climbing down I kept thinking of the hike back up and out. But as it turned out, the climb out was a steady incline on a dirt path that lasted for probably a mile. It was definitely uphill, but not unbearable. I didn’t take any photos of that stretch because the path was sandwiched between a power line clearing and a road and wasn’t very spectacular. About halfway up, we met another couple. The woman looked absolutely bushed — and she’d been going downhill the whole time. She asked if they were almost back to Sylvan Lake, and I had to break it to her that she wasn’t even close and the trail was hard up ahead. She would have been better off turning around, but I didn’t say that to her. I wonder if she made it or if she’s still down there.
We finally got up to lake level and had perhaps a half mile hike on the rim with amazing views.
When we got back to the lake, we decided to hike around it before heading back up to the lodge. We lost the trail somehow and found ourselves blazing a trail through the woods. We kept going down hill, but I knew if we kept going we’d have to meet the other end of the path — and we did, about a third of the way down the boulder field, which meant that we got to climb down and up the hardest section.
The weather was perfect and it was fun just to be out and about. I hope the lady stuck at the bottom of the gulch is enjoying it as much as I did.