May 15–17, 2026 · Black Hills
Seven summits. Three days.
174.5 miles of Black Hills granite.
Hit seven 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, climb the high rim through Bear / Grand View / Odakota / Green, then run the spine north past Crows Nest and Crooks Tower to finish at Terry Peak.
The route is Jason's 2026 redraw — denser than the older paths, more climbing, more time above 7,000 ft. 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.
“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 27
The first peak comes early. After twenty-seven miles of patient climbing out of Cheyenne Crossing, Dumont marks the high point of Day 1 — and the moment you stop fighting gravity and start working with it. From here it's net-descent through Rochford and Mystic before the bump up to Sylvan.
Mile 37
Where the high rim begins. After dropping 1,600 ft from Sylvan Peak into Hill City for lunch, you grind seventeen miles back up to the 7,000-ft ridge — and Bear is the gate. The forest changes here: ponderosa thins, granite outcrops appear, and the air gets noticeably thinner.
Mile 39
Two miles past Bear, the second summit in the high-rim corridor. From the top on a clear afternoon you can see the western flank of the Hills falling away toward the Wyoming line — the kind of view that makes the climbing feel like a fair trade.
Mile 44
The first 7,000-footer on the day. "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 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 last named summit 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 at Terry Peak. The math is finally on your side.
Day 1 · Friday, May 15
Day 2 · Saturday, May 16
Day 3 · Sunday, May 17
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.
The ride was recorded on StoneBC — the Stone Bicycle Coalition's iOS app — with the Day 1 and loop GPX tracks pre-loaded for offline follow-mode, plus full journal capture for photos, waypoints, and route notes. A Garmin inReach broadcast our position to live.garmin.com/stonerory so home could watch the dots move.
Stone Bicycle Coalition Download Day 1 GPX Download Loop GPX
Finished the ride? There's a leather-bound journal waiting for you at Acme Bikes — sign in, share the story, earn the patch. Read about the Ride Log →