Riding the North Dakota Maah Daah Hey - A Badlands Epic

"It's not called the Goodlands," said Loren Morlock as his daughter Nancy and I prepared to mountain bike North Dakota's Maah Daah Hey trail. We were attempting to complete the 110-mile Badlands singletrack in two days.

Loren and his wife have spent thousands of hours in the tiny town of Medora and the surrounding Badlands. Their shop, the Dakota Cyclery, is based out of Bismarck, and they open a sister store in Medora each summer. The Cyclery offers shuttle and guide services, bike rentals and great advice. Nancy and her brothers grew up riding portions of the Maah Daah Hey, but she'd never attempted to ride the whole thing. I'd never even been to North Dakota.

We pedaled from marker 0 just outside of Medora, traveling north. The trail runs north/south between Theodore Roosevelt National Park's North and South Units. The morning was cool and overcast. Prairie songbirds were cheerfully vocal and the singletrack was unexpectedly rideable. What's so bad about this place?

For starters, one could quickly become irreversibly lost. Wooden posts branded with a turtle symbol mark the Maah Daah Hey. Riders should be able to stand at one post and see the next, but often plant growth or erosion made the posts hard to spot. Cattle use the smooth, rolling trail to find water, and they enjoy blazing their own paths. Numerous random routes meandered from the main trail-either dead ending after a few minutes, or continuing for miles. We learned to question our direction constantly. If we couldn't see a post, we'd have to backtrack until we could connect the trail. This process became fairly time consuming.

Wildflowers grew from petrified wood stumps. Cacti bloomed bright pink and yellow. A vast vista of colorful eroding soil, the strange topography of the Badlands, was created over millions of years by the erosive power of the Little Missouri River. We rode through landscapes varying from desert to marshland. Geologic formations like those of the southwest climb to mesa tops that compose the flat prairies of the Little Missouri Grasslands.

While the landscape is undeniably beautiful, the massive striated buttes are not benign. It rarely rains in the Badlands, but when it does, the fine soil turns into thick, slippery clay. We had been making good time until the rain began. As soon as the soil became damp, our tires collected pounds of mud. We stepped off our bikes and the heavy clay stuck to our shoes. We carried our useless rides for several miles before we were able to clear our tires and pedal again.

Our second day of riding greeted us with an entirely new set of challenges. Stagnant, scorching heat greeted us on our first climb. We were being devoured by horseflies despite being slathered in bug repellent. We crossed the Little Missouri River, passing through trees covering sandy grasslands. Aspen forests grew in gullies and on the sloping sides of buttes, providing small increments of shade and fast, tacky downhills.

Shortly into our ride, we passed the turnoff for the Magpie camp, our only source for potable water for the next 25 miles. Nancy and I had water in our Camelbaks and water bottles, so we kept riding-mostly to escape the bugs. Unfortunately, we hadn't predicted the lack of shade or the lengthy climbs we would encounter later in the day.

We ran out of water, but I was glad we hadn't brought iodine pills or a water filter. What standing water exists on the trail is thick and murky, used for livestock. And livestock hovers close to the water. A good goring seemed entirely possible. My fear for Badlands bovine surfaced early, when I realized that after traveling for hours and hours, it was still just the cattle and us. I was happy to accelerate away from skittish herds, knowing that if worse really, really came to worse, I had a shiny piece of metal to sacrifice. Being thirsty for a while seemed like a more reasonable alternative than tangling with these guys.

The Storm Ranch, run by Ed and Judy Storm fits into the irony of the Badlands. Just when we thought we'd gotten in over our heads, signs for the ranch appeared. I had thought we were literally hours from any form of human life, yet just a half mile from the trail sat an oasis. It was a pleasant surprise that saved Nancy and I from certain doom-or at least chronic dehydration.

While at the ranch, we decided to abort our mission and have Loren pick us up from Bennett Creek camp, about eight miles away. It was a smart decision. We wouldn't have been able to finish the ride before dark, and neither of us had any desire to risk getting lost-or gored-after sunset.

Everything about the Badlands is a contradiction. A beautiful landscape became nightmarish a few drops of rain. Shaded groves and cool resting spots were ridden with horseflies. From day to day, conditions change. Theodore Roosevelt came to Medora after his mother and his wife passed away on the same day. He credited the Badlands with helping him overcome his sorrow and gain the strength he needed to become a U.S. President. I get it now. The Badlands is about handling the exposure, the raw elements of weather and landscape, with your own resources. And Loren was right; it's called the Badlands for a reason. Then I think of the fun, swoopy singletrack and the incredible mesa-top vistas, and I can't help but want to go back.