For quite a while now, I have wanted to hike to the top of the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The only time you can do that is the first weekend of June, when they have a Volksmarch to the top. The start of the WINs summer circuit was timed so we could do the walk.
A Volksmarch is 10K, or 6.2 miles. Here's the start, where you have to sign your life away. They have check-in points along the way so they don't lose anyone...
In order to make the hike 6.2 miles, they make you walk over hill and dale, up and down, back and forth through the woods. There are as many as 10,000 people doing this hike each day.
After a lot of meandering, we start the trek around to the back of the monument.
We found 2 shaggy mountain goats. Apparently, they stay here all year, and are not bothered by the blasting.
Fortunately, there were lots of porta-potties along the way.
We finally made it to the back side of the monument, and are nearing the top!
Wow!!! Here we are! About a dozen WINs made it to the top, but this is all I could gather at one time for a picture - Carolyn, Peter, me, Phil, and Donna.
The monument was started in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski. He passed away in 1982, but his children are continuing the project. They do not accept any federal funding. It took 50 years, 1998, for the face to be completed.
Eye-to-eye with Crazy Horse!
The current work on the mountain is focusing on the horse's head and Crazy Horse's hand.
This is a photo of the recently drawn hand from the air.
A lot of people were doing the "finger-up-the-nose" photo, but of course, I would never do that...
I'm glad they weren't doing any blasting today...
On the way back down, guess what I found - rusty stuff!!!
The Visitors Center is actually only 3/4 mile from the monument, and you can see that if they let you go straight, the hike would have been a lot shorter, but then they couldn't call it a Volksmarch.
Yay! I made it. I'm soooo proud! New this year, they will be another Volksmarch to the top the last weekend of September. So if you will be in the area, come on up!
