37th High Point Visited
30th Highest State Highpoint
23rd Most Difficult
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| White Butte (3,506), North Dakota - State Highpoint #37 |
2025 has been a whirlwind for me & state highpoints. I hadn't done more than one new state highpoint in a single year since 2014 or 11 years ago so it's pretty amazing this was my 4th one this year! In June I was lucky to share Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma with my daughter and now in August North Dakota I shared with one of my friends also named Brian who had previously together climbed Mt. Whitney (CA) and Mt. Boundry (NV) so it would be his 3rd highpoint. While the last two together we had to work a little, or should I say a lot harder, because White Butte is a walk in the park in comparison.
After the three highpoints in June I knew I had one more in me and really have been thinking long and hard about Montana and Wyoming. This body isn't getting any younger and the longer I wait the great the chances are I'm either not going to do them or the harder they are going to be for me to do. As far as a travel budget, I could do North Dakota in 1-2 days vs. a longer trip including the recommended guided experience which of course doesn't come cheap. So the budget pointed me toward postponing Wyoming and Montana for another year.
My friend Brian loves to travel and has been quite a world traveler recently so I thought it was going to be hard to talk him into going to North Dakota basically to the middle of nowhere. To my surprise, he's was down for an adventure so the ball began to roll. We explored several flight destinations but eventually decided on Bismarck. It was a little further drive than Dickerson, however, flights into North Dakota are pretty limited and it seemed like Bismark offered a friendlier schedule.
Unless we added a trip all the way down to the Black Hills of South Dakota really the only other point of interest was Theodore Roosevelt National Park and it's so close to White Butte it only make sense to include this destination into our trip planning. Another friend Greg highly recommended not only seeing the South Unit but also to visit the North Unit. I remember once prior flying into Fargo I had hoped to see Buffalo but never did so part of my mission would be to find some to see.
While most 3 day weekends start include a Friday or a Monday, this one started early and I would fly out early on a Thursday and return late Saturday night. If all went well we could hike White Butte on Thursday and have all day Friday and most of the day Saturday to explore what North Dakota had to offer. I wasn't sure where we would end up Thursday night so I didn't book a hotel in advance, only a rental car.
Interestingly Brian has an employee flight pass with United and believe it or not United is basically the only airline I found to service Bismarck. He would wing it and try to jump seat last minute while I actually had a ticket with a window seat. I'm one of those people that like to be at the airport well beyond the recommended 1 hour window just to prevent the whole anything that could go wrong likely will go wrong. For better or worse my flight out of LAX was at 5:05 a.m. which required a very early drive to the airport. I checked 3 days before our flight and it looked as if there were not enough seats on either flight so I was pretty certain I was going to spend this trip alone, however, Brian stepped up and flew into Denver a night early, got a hotel, then caught an earlier flight to Bismark, so he landed about the time I was taking off. It all worked out and we were both on the ground by 1pm.
Our destination was 2 hours away and we had plenty of sunlight so there wasn't a rush to get there. Actually it was pretty warm for North Dakota so the longer we took to get there the cooler it might be for our hike so where better to go than a BBQ and brewpub. Rental car check in took about 5 minutes, the lot was a 2 minute walk from the terminal, and 10 minutes later we pulled up a seat at the bar. I was reminded of the 3 hour nightmare of renting a car in Denver and this experience was night and day!
We were soon on the highway I-94 heading west toward White Butte. It reminded me of Ohio with flat farmlands in all directions. The western side of the state has their own "badlands" similar to South Dakota with some rolling hills, but most of the drive there were no hills. Even the highpoint only has a 400 ft gain so it wasn't like it was a big mountain. We got off the highway in Dickerson and made a stop a Walmart to get some drinks/snacks for the car and Brian has this idea it would be fun to find a fishing hole so bought himself a rod and reel called the Ugly Stick.
Back on the road we were soon at our turn off and headed south. We still couldn't see any prominent peaks but as we continued soon we could clearly see a Mesa off to the left that was the highest thing around, however, our GPS was pointing further south and further west so what we saw wasn't White Butte. We would later learn that it was called Black Butte. Apparently it was mistaken as the state's highpoint until 1962 and sits only 40ft below White Butte. As we continued we could finally make out a few more peaks and knew one of them had to be what we were in search of.
There was good signage all the way there but our GPS was taking us to the wrong location and we flew by the sign clearly marking our turn down a dirt road to our trailhead. It's always hit or miss how many others are going to be at a high point and we were surprised to see two other cars in the parking lot. As we prepared for our 1 mile hike to the top we saw 4 hikers on their way back from the summit. We started our hike and passed them, one of them a state high pointer from New York. He had just done New Mexico a couple days earlier and claimed to be heading towards Idaho and this one was just in the middle.
The hike took 20 minutes from the time we left the car. I saw some pictures online and it didn't look that scenic, but maybe me expectations were set too low because the entire hike was delightful. There were cool rock formations from the start of the hike to our right as we continued parallel to them. The guide said to look out for rattlesnakes and wouldn't you know right next to the trail one made a distinctive sound of a rattle which raised our alertness the rest of the way up.
We quickly started ascending and while only 400 feet gain, between the heat and just coming from sea level we were both huffing and puffing, maybe Brian a little more because lets just say I'm a little younger and a little better shape. Because the surrounding area is so flat we had a great panoramic view in all directions. There was a metal box with a register inside that we didn't bother to open and a US Benchmark marketing that we made it there. We spent a few minutes taking some pictures and turned around and hiked back the way we came to the car. We saw a rabbit at the bottom of the hill before we made it to the car.
Brian wanted to find a "unique" place to stay and we found just that. We had seen a big metal sculpture along the I-94 and learned that there are a bunch of them along a side road that leads to a small farming town called Regent. In Regent there is a hotel called the Enchanted Hotel. The road that leads to town is called the Enchanted highway. We would learn a lot more about the highway on Friday. We came to Regent from the opposite direction so we didn't get to see any of the sculptures except for the dragon in front of the castle.
We checked in the hotel, took a nap to recover from the early wake up call to get to the airport and eventually headed a block back into town to the local saloon for a steak and drinks. For a Thursday night it was a happing joint with all the local farmers. We probably looked like fish out of water to all of them.
Friday morning we headed all the way back to the I-94 along the enchanted highway and stopped at all the sculptures. There is a link for an audiobook for describing each sculpture and more about the artist and how they were all built to attract travelers off the interstate to the small town to keep it alive. After our last sculpture, the one next to I-94 we headed further west towards Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
It was a fun day with a long drive thru the south unit (where we saw no buffalo) to we ventured north to the north unit where they said we were guaranteed to see buffalo in the first 1.5 miles after we made our entrance. Surprisinly, the North Unit is a long drive from the South Unit, but it was taking us towards an enormous lake where Brian might be able to fish on Saturday before we caught our planes home.
We had been blessed with marginal winds Thursday and Friday, but Saturday that all changed. The gusty 30+ mph winds made for a challenging drive as well as choppy waters for fishing. One last point of interest we found was an Interactive Lewis & Clark Museum which we spent more than an hour and I learned infinitely more than I ever had learned before. When I got home I was even recommended a booked called Undaunted Courage which I'm looking forward to learning even more. We eventually made it back to Bismarck and found yet another BBQ place and had time to enjoy before returning to the airport.
State #37 was a breeze. 10 more easy ones and 3 hard ones are all that are left to do!
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