Not exactly a welcome sign

The sign pretty much says it all. The French Creek trail – well, sort of a trail – in Custer State Park is one of the toughest hikes in the Black Hills. But it’s also one of the most rewarding.

If you start from the bottom, on the east side, it’s a scenic, leisurely hike along a gentle stream. The oaks and other deciduous trees are gorgeous, especially in the fall, and especially when contrasted with the bright orange canyon walls above.

There are a lot of buffalo chips, and some of them look fresh, but the bison must have been elsewhere the times I’ve hiked the area.

As you proceed up the canyon, the trees become evergreens, and French Creek turns into a series of ponds and swimming holes punctuated by fast-running brooks. This is a good place to stop, take a swim and then head back down.

But if you want a challenge … keep hiking. About midway along the 12-mile trail is an area called The Narrows. That’s where the canyon walls move closer to the creek, the trail becomes harder to find, and the creek crossings become more frequent.

After awhile, the only way to keep going is to start climbing. It gets really steep, and you end up bush-whacking your way along 60-degree slopes with deadfall trees and heavy brush all over the place. You give up trying to make good time. You give up trying to look graceful. You just scramble like an ant on a peanut-butter sandwich.

When my friend John, my dog Kody and I backpacked through here a couple of years ago, we got seriously bogged down in The Narrows. At one point Kody, unable to find his way around a deadfall on a steep slope, started howling. His howls echoed off the walls of the canyon, and he looked at me as if I were a madman. But he figured it out, got around the tree, and before long we were back down along the creek.

We went almost the entire 12 miles, and camped at the primitive campground near the Blue Bell Lodge and hiked back down the next day. … That’s when we actually read the sign with all the warnings.

Back home, all three of us were completely infested with wood ticks. And for the humans, the poison ivy started kicking in the next morning. Itchy, itchy, itchy.