CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Spearfish, one way: 36 km, roughly 45 min in the saddle. It goes by way of Bridal Veil Falls and Roughlock Falls. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 18 km this is Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Spearfish stands at the northern edge of the Black Hills, where the prairie of South Dakota lifts into a dark, forested dome of ancient rock and pine. The town, with about eleven thousand people, is a university town as well as a gateway, and its old brick main street, its trout stream and its neat tree-lined blocks give it a calmer feel than the more touristy places further south. The Black Hills themselves are sacred to the Lakota, who call them Paha Sapa, and the land was the subject of a long and bitter dispute after gold turned up in 1874.
Read the complete Spearfish write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Spearfish is where the day begins. Next is Bridal Veil Falls.
Spearfish Canyon feels as if somebody lifted a piece of the Rockies and set it down in the Black Hills, and Bridal Veil Falls is its tidiest corner. The falls pour over a ledge right beside the road, perhaps sixty feet of white water falling into a rocky pool under spruce and aspen. You park, you walk about forty steps, and you are standing in cool spray. Some travellers expect more drama, and that is rather the point: here the falls are an excuse to get off the bike beside a creek, not a trek.
Read the complete Bridal Veil Falls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bridal Veil Falls comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Next is Roughlock Falls.
Roughlock gets its name from the wagon days. Freight drivers coming down steep Black Hills grades would jam a roughlock, a kind of drag shoe, under a wheel to stop it turning, and the name stuck to a creek that lots of those wagons must have crossed. What I can say is that the falls are good: Little Spearfish Creek drops over a wide limestone lip into a pool, and the whole thing is framed by evergreens and the sort of damp rock that smells faintly of minerals.
Read the complete Roughlock Falls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 26 km into the recorded legs you reach Roughlock Falls. Next is Cheyenne Crossing.
Spearfish Canyon is the kind of place where the road follows the creek and the cliffs close in on both sides. The canyon, cut through the northern Black Hills by Spearfish Creek, has limestone walls hundreds of feet high, covered in pine and spruce, with aspen and birch that blaze yellow in autumn. US 14A runs along the bottom for about twenty miles, and Cheyenne Crossing, near the middle, is a small roadside stop where a store and a cafe serve riders, hikers and passing travellers. The name recalls the old stage route between Cheyenne and Deadwood during the gold rush years.
Read the complete Cheyenne Crossing write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cheyenne Crossing closes the day.
Spearfish → Bridal Veil Falls is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bridal Veil Falls → Roughlock Falls is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Roughlock Falls → Cheyenne Crossing is 10 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.