Thursday, July 21, 2011

Captain Capitalism's Great Hippie Hole Adventure

The Hippie Hole is a swimming hole in arguably the most remote region of the Black Hills. I ran out of time last year to find it and decided today that with a bum right leg I should manage to find it and do a little swimming.

According to teh interwebz I could just "drive right up to the parking area" and in a "short 15 minute hike" manage to get there.

They didn't tell me that the dirt road you have to travel is nearly impossible for compact cars, let alone normal ones. And they didn't tell me that the "short 15 minute hike" is more or less scaling a cliff down at about a 70 degree angle. Despite my right leg being shot, I was able to hike the 2 miles into the parking lot and hobble my way down the cliff and find the Hippie Hole

It's a really neat and REMOTE place. More or less a natural damn fed by a 30 foot waterfall. You can climb up a little higher and take about a 40 foot dive, but nothing like the 100 foot cliff jumping you can do in St. Croix, WI. If it weren't for all the poison Ivy I'd consider camping there. Below are a couple pictures and a video.






And on a related note; "Hell, the fall alone will probably kill ya!"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lat/Lon Coordinates?

eljay said...

Your posts on the ninja got me motivated to go from a transit rider to biker. I just got my learner permit last night, signed up for lessons and shopping for ninjas now. I'm riding down from Toronto to visit you next summer.

Justin said...

Most people significantly overestimate the angle of a slope. A 70 degree incline would be full on rock climbing. In fact, some of the things I climb in Tuolumne aren't much more than 45 degrees, and are definitely technical rock climbing, coming in around 5.5-5.8.

I had friends walking on a steep slabby granite face, they were complaining about how steep it was. I asked them to guess the slope angle. All of them guessed 45 degrees or steeper, it was actually closer to 20 degrees.

If you're curious how I know the slope angles, I am usually carrying an inclinometer. It's standard back country skiing equipment, and lives in my jacket pocket.