Buckhorn Trail

Buckhorn Trail eases you into the North Dakota badlands with a six-mile out-and-back that delivers outsized scenery for modest effort. You'll start on open prairie before the trail drops into a coulee and begins threading through eroded clay formations striped in rust, charcoal, and pale gray. The elevation gain is gentle — about as much climbing as a few flights of stadium stairs spread over three miles — so the challenge here is distance and exposure, not steep pitches. As you gain the ridge, the views crack open: endless grassland rolling north, banded buttes to the south, and if the bison herd is grazing nearby, a scene that looks lifted from a century ago. The trail surface alternates between packed dirt and crumbly bentonite clay, which gets treacherously slick when wet. This one is perfect for hikers who want real backcountry solitude without a punishing climb.