May 15–17, 2026 · Black Hills
Eight summits. Three days.
174.5 miles of Black Hills granite.
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↓Hit eight Black Hills summits on a loaded bike, sleeping out of bags, in three days. Start at Cheyenne Crossing in the northwest corner of the Hills, drop south through Rochford and Mystic to Sylvan Peak, then open Day 2 with Black Elk on foot before climbing the high-rim corridor through Bear / Odakota / Green. Day 3 runs the spine north past Crows Nest and Crooks Tower to finish at Terry Peak.
Jason builds the GPX from the crew's old routes; the line tweaks slightly each year — sometimes the loop runs north-to-south, sometimes the reverse. The numbers are honest: 174.5 miles and somewhere between 11,000 and 14,000 feet of climbing depending on how aggressively the GPS catches kickers. The legs know which is true.
"8 Over 7" began as a list. In summer 2017, Seth Tupper serialized the eight Black Hills peaks above 7,000 ft across eight Saturday installments of the Rapid City Journal — June 10 through July 29, one peak per week. The series gave the range's quietest distinction a name and a number, and it caught on.
"Set a treadmill to its highest incline and walk on it while someone throws waist-high obstructions in your path every few seconds, and you'll have some idea what it's like to pick and scramble and clamber your way up to Sylvan Peak."
— Seth Tupper, Rapid City Journal, June 10, 2017
A year later — July 7, 2018 — Rapid City endurance athlete Erick Sykora became the first known person to summit all eight under his own power in a single day. He moved by bike between trailheads and on foot to each summit: ~100 miles cycling, ~15 miles on foot, roughly fifteen hours from a 5 a.m. start. Eight months of route planning, his parents shadowing in a pickup with water and food. The name stuck.
The next chapter started in winter. Perry Jewett had been chasing the eight summits on fat bikes for years — attempts that ran out of light, cold, or daylight before the loop closed. The breakthrough came as a loaded-bike weekend trip with Zach on the first mission to finish; Perry rolled in from town at the end. What you see on this site is the crew's evolution of that ride: same eight summits in spirit, refined each year, ridden over three days with bags on the bikes.
Read the source: Rapid City Journal collection (2017, paywall) · South Dakota Magazine recap by John Andrews (2021)
“It’s becoming a classic annual Black Hills dirt tour to iconic peaks and high points. It’s special to me because of the routes and places it takes you. The time invested in perfecting the route. Also the camaraderie of taking on the challenges with like minded riders.”
Both tracks rendered together — Day 1's point-to-point on the left, the Day 2 / 3 loop on the right. Pinch and pan.
GPX: Day 1 (Cheyenne Crossing → Sylvan) · Loop (Sylvan → Terry)
Each one earned. Listed in the order they came.
Mile 67
Day 1's final climb. After 67 miles from Cheyenne Crossing — through Rochford, Mystic, and Hill City — the route lifts you to Sylvan Peak in the last hour of light. Camp here on the first 7,000-ft peak. The 8 Over 7 starts in earnest tomorrow morning.
Mile 7
Day 2 opens at the top of the range. Black Elk — Hé Sápa peak — is the highest point in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The Lakota call this range He Sapa, the Heart of Everything That Is. We approach by trail from the Sylvan side, summit on foot, and roll back down to start the high-rim corridor.
Mile 37
Day 2's first ridge-line summit on the bike. After Black Elk on foot, you remount, drop 1,600 ft into Hill City for lunch, then grind seventeen miles back up to the 7,000-ft rim. Bear marks the return. The forest changes here — ponderosa thins, granite outcrops appear, the air gets noticeably thinner.
Mile 44
Five miles past Bear on the high rim. "Odakota" carries the Dakota name itself — friend, ally — and the peak sits inside Black Elk Wilderness on land the Lakota call He Sapa, the Heart of Everything That Is. We ride past, not over. Names matter.
Mile 49
The high point of Day 2 and the highest bike-line summit on the route. Five miles north of Odakota, Green is where the ridge crests before falling away toward Mountain Meadows. If the legs are going to argue, this is where they pick the fight.
Mile 73
The opener for Day 3. Sixteen miles from Mountain Meadows, in the long no-resupply stretch, Crows Nest climbs a thousand feet from the valley floor. By now the body has accepted that the day is going to be earned, not given.
Mile 85
The seventh summit, and the last named climb before Terry. From here it's twenty-two miles north along the spine of the Hills — past the ghosts of old mining camps, through aspen pockets and pine — to the finish. The math is finally on your side.
Mile 107
The finish. From Crooks Tower it's twenty-two miles north along the spine of the Hills — through aspen pockets and pine — to the chair-lifted summit of Terry Peak. Eight peaks done. Black Hills granite under the tires the whole way.
Two canonical lists exist. The historical count from the 2017 South Dakota Magazine series puts it at eight. The strict prominence-based list per peakbagger drops two and adds one, putting it at seven. The name "8 Over 7" comes from the historical count.
Historical · 8 peaks · SD Magazine 2017
Strict prominence · 7 peaks · peakbagger
Counties: Pennington (top of the range), Lawrence (Crooks + Terry, in the north). "P" = prominence in feet, the rise from the highest connecting saddle.
Day 1 · Friday, May 15
8over7 Day 1
Friday, May 15, 2026 · 7:35 AM · 75°F
from Spearfish, South Dakota
Day 2 · Saturday, May 16
8over7 Day 2
Saturday, May 16, 2026 · 6:16 AM · 64°F
from West Custer, South Dakota
Day 3 · Sunday, May 17
8over7 Day 3
Sunday, May 17, 2026 · 7:21 AM · 43°F
from West Pennington, South Dakota
An island range standing alone on the northern plains. Older than the Rockies, smaller than the Tetons, and dense with story.
To the Lakota, these mountains are not scenery. They are He Sapa — the Heart — sacred ground, the center of the spiritual world, the place of vision. We ride here as guests, not owners. The route passes Black Elk Peak (Hé Sápa peak) without summiting, and crosses Odakota Mountain — a Dakota word for friend or ally.
The Precambrian core of the Black Hills is among the oldest exposed rock in North America — granite and schist nearly 1.8 billion years old. The Rockies are a quarter that age. Every kicker climb on this route is bedrock that watched continents rearrange themselves.
From every direction, the Hills rise out of flat grassland like a 110-mile-long monolith. Drive in from Rapid City and you watch them grow on the horizon for forty miles. This isolation creates its own weather, its own wildlife, its own ecosystems — a forested archipelago surrounded by a sea of grass.
The elevation gradient — 3,000 ft on the eastern flank to 7,242 ft at Black Elk — and the prairie/montane boundary mean weather changes fast. We rolled out in sun on Day 2 and finished the ridge in snow squalls. Carry layers. Believe the locals.
Bighorn sheep on Spring Creek. Mountain goats on Custer State Park granite. Elk and bison in numbers the eastern half of the country lost two centuries ago. We saw three bison on Day 2 — calmly grazing, utterly unbothered. The Hills are still wild.
Black Elk Peak — 7,242 ft — is the highest point in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Our route passes its shoulder. Stand on top on a clear day and you can see five states. The closest higher summit is 300 miles away.
Six shots from across the weekend — the full set of 152 lives on Adobe Portfolio. Click any frame to open full size, or browse the full gallery →
Ride more with Perry
Perry and Kristi Jewett don't just ride the Black Hills — they host them. Ridge Rider Racing produces three annual events out of Spearfish that bracket the South Dakota cycling year. If 8 Over 7 was the spark, these are the year-round practice.
Late winter
Send winter off on a fat bike. Fifty kilometers through Spearfish Canyon under permit on the Black Hills National Forest — the region's premier fat-tire celebration.
Visit 28 Below →June 11–13, 2026
Three days of gravel rolling out of Spearfish into the Hills. Riders come back for the course, the people, and the meticulous logistics that have earned it a reputation as one of the best-organized gravel weekends in the region.
Visit Pine Island Gravel Odyssey →September 4–6, 2026
The late-summer headliner. Race, ride, or tour the Five-O across three days of Black Hills gravel. Combine it with Pine Island via the Ridge Rider Dual for a custom finishers mug.
Visit Dakota Five-O →Tell Perry you found him through 8 Over 7.
The finisher tradition
Finish 8 Over 7 in a single weekend. Drop into Acme Bikes. Sign the leather-bound journal. Earn the patch.