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Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park: One of the Best Hikes in the Park

Castle Trail Badlands National Park

The Castle Trail, Badlands National Park is an easy one-way hike with epic scenery. This is one of the best hikes in Badlands National Park. If you can spot a car, this is an excellent, and easy, one-way hike that takes you through stunning rock formations.

The Badland’s Castle Trail can also be hiked from several different directions, so if you only have one car you can still do this trail. This was one of our favorite hikes in Badlands National Park.

Looking for more information on visiting Badlands National Park? Check out: 1-Day Badlands National Park Itinerary

Quick Overview of Castle Trail Badlands National Park

Since there are several options for hiking the Castle Trail, I’ll start with hiking the full trail and give you some more information on the other options as well. The trail itself is 5 miles long and goes from the Castle Trailhead and ends at the Fossil Exhibit Area (although you can end the trail at Saddle Pass Trailhead as well).

This hike is very exposed without much shade, so bring sun protection and plenty of water

Badlands Castle Trail One Way

Distance: 5 miles to the Fossil Exhibit Trailhead (give yourself 2.5 hours for this hike)
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 300 feet

There is no shuttle here so you will need to have 2 cars (or some good friends to help with this hike).

Castle Trail in Badlands: Out and Back

Another option for hiking the Castle Trail, Badlands, is to choose one of the ends and hike the trail as an out and back. You can choose to do the entire 10 miles round trip, or just do a smaller portion of the hike. We saw many people doing this option.

Castle Trail and Medicine Root Trail Loop

The distance of this trail varies as you can either access the loop from Saddle Pass or from the Castle Trailhead. From Saddle Pass this trail is about 4.5 miles long. None of these options have significant elevation gains so you can hike the route pretty fast.

Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park
Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park

Our Hike of the Castle Trail Badlands National Park

When we hiked the Castle Trail in the Badland, we were fortunate that my mother-in-law did not want to do the trail, so she and my youngest daughter dropped us at the start of the trail, and picked us up at Saddle Pass. This meant that my two 13 year-olds and I did the trail ourselves – one way.

This was the ideal way to hike the trail and we kept up a fast run/walk pace for most of the hike. We also chose to do this hike early in the morning since the temperature on this day got above 100. We completed the hike before 9 AM and we were glad to get in the car for some air conditioning and water when we were done.

Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park
Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park

One-Way Castle Trail Route: Castle Trailhead to Saddle Pass

The trailhead starts right across from the parking lot for the Notch Trail, the Door Trail and the Window Trail. We did all 3 of these trails before we did the Castle Trail since several of them are very short. We had an amibtious 5:30 start to see the sunrise on the Notch Trail before starting the Castle Trail.

The trailhead is easy to see across from the parking lot, and once you are on the trail the trail itself is easy to follow. You will see occasional signs showing you the way, and will see signage for the Medicine Root Trail. In general, the Castle Trail is more scenic.

Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park
Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park

The views along this part of the trail are fabulous and the trail winds through different rock formations. During the second part of the hike, the view opens up and you can see out over the strirated rock mounds. If you’re lucky you may see some long horned sheep.

Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park

We decided to take the Saddle Pass Trail since we were meeting our car there, but you could also continue to hike to the Fossil Exhibit Area. The hike down from Saddlepass was the most difficult part of the hike. The trail is relatively steep and with some drop offs and sliding sand it can get a little tricky.

There were also a lot of people hiking up the short trail which meant lots of pausing and waiting for people to pass.

Overall we loved this hike and enjoyed getting to see some amazing rock formations on a nice, flat trail.

Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park
Hiking the Castle Trail Badlands National Park

Things to Know About Hiking the Castle Trail in Badlands

  • The Badlands can get really hot in the summer – pack sun protection and plenty of water (at least 1-2 liters/person)
  • In the summer months, thunderstorms with hail are not uncommon in this area – check the weather and if you can go in the morning before the heat and the storms.
  • There are bathrooms at the trailheads, but not at Saddle Pass.

Looking for somewhere to stay in Badlands? We stayed right at the Cedar Pass campground in the park so we were ready to go in the morning and didn’t need to take time to drive into the park. This campground is right near both ends of this trailhead. After we finished hiking the Castle Trail, we went back to pack up our tent and headed off to explore more of the park. You can reserve a tent site through the National Park Service.

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