Beartooth Highway
64 miles (103 km), 1 hr 35 min, intermediate
Photo: Tumbleweed1954, CC BY-SA 4.0, resizedMotorcycle ride in South Dakota
Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road (Black Hills)
42 miles (67 km), 1 hr 5 min, intermediate
In Custer State Park, the Needles Highway (SD 87) threads between granite spires and passes through two tunnels cut into the rock, including the Needles Eye tunnel, about 2.4 m wide. Sylvan Lake is the start of trail no. 9 to Black Elk Peak, the highest point in South Dakota, and another trail leaves the road towards the Cathedral Spires. The route continues on the Iron Mountain Road, with its pigtail bridges and three tunnels that frame Mount Rushmore, on a road designed to be ridden slowly. An entrance licence ($20 per motorcycle, valid 1 to 7 days) is required as soon as you stop in the park, bison roam freely, and the Needles Highway closes with the first snow until 1 April at the earliest.
Stops along the way
- SStart: Hill City
- 1Lac Sylvan, after 9 miles (15 km)
- 2Tunnel du Needles Eye, after 11 miles (17 km)
- 3Départ du sentier des Cathedral Spires, after 12 miles (19 km)
- 4Legion Lake, after 24 miles (38 km)
- 5Tunnel Doane Robinson (Iron Mountain Road), after 38 miles (62 km)
- FFinish: Keystone, after 42 miles (67 km)
Download the GPXTrack and stops as a GPX file, for a sat nav or another app.
Photos along the route
This ride in the MotoLert app
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Other rides nearby
Roads change: passes close in winter, roadworks, rockfalls, local restrictions. Check the road before you set off. MotoLert does not replace road signs or the Highway Code.
Route planned by MotoLert with Valhalla on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL). Photos from Wikimedia Commons, with the author and licence under each image.