Victoria Canyon Climbing Access Issues

Photo by Luke Ross

This past meeting a member from the Dark Canyon community came and wanted to stress some concerns their family has been dealing with in regards to trespassing and vandalism on their property. As the Black Hills Climbers Coalition, our job and duty is to make sure that our climbing community is respecting the property boundaries that have been set and agreed upon with the nearby community and Forest Service.

This property owner stressed concerns about potential climbers using their property as a way to access the Victoria Canyon climbing area via Dark Canyon (Highway 44). We ask that you please make sure that if you are to climb in the Victoria Canyon area, to please use the access approach from Sheridan Lake Road. The description of this access is posted on Mountain Project (shown below), as well as in the local climbing guidebook, “Spearfish Canyon, the VC, and other Black Hills Limestone” by Mike Cronin.

Please spread the word to other climbing groups as well as other user groups you may know. Its important to respect the property boundaries that are in place. Disrespecting these boundaries can jeopardize the climbing access to these places in the future. Thank you for your understanding and for the continued respect to our climbing areas!

Brief description of how to properly access Victoria Canyon from Mountain Project:

“Take Sheridan Lake road west out of Rapid City. You will come to a convenience store on the corner of Sheridan Lake Road and Dunsmore, go 2.1 miles more until you come to Norsemen Lane on the north (right) side of the road (this is the location of the GPS coordinates on the climbing area map). Take this road for about 100yards until you go through a NFS gate (open May 15-Dec 15). The NFS road you come to is #150. Start your mileage at this point. Stay on the well traveled dirt road for 1.7 miles then go right at road 1E. You will drive over a few rubber water bars until you hit an open meadow at mile 2.7. Stay on the well traveled road through the meadow until mile 3.2. There are no motorized signs at this point, park here and walk for .3 miles to an old barbed wire fence (hard to see) and the trail into the canyon. Follow the trail left downhill for about 3 minutes to a sweet overlook of the canyon. Go left and follow the trail down hill for another 2 minutes to the creek. Follow the creek bed to the right for about 5 minutes to the climbing. The creek flows in the spring through mid summer, getting to the routes can be cold and wet. Come prepared for being wet (water shoes, towel etc).”

The photo below is a satellite overview of Victoria Canyon. The parking area (meadow) is on the bottom right with the VC directly above. The green overlay is Black Hills Forest Service. From the map you can see that accessing through Dark Canyon does go through private property and access should be done through Sheridan Lake Rd.