Parking
Use the Yellow Mounds Overlook pullout on SD-240; the short path begins at the viewpoint rather than a separate trailhead lot.
Overview
About Yellow Mounds Overlook Trail
Why go
- A short walk brings the colored formations close.
- Easy to add to the Badlands Loop Road drive.
Heads up
- The walk is informal and unmarked; farther tracks do not make a defined loop.
Map & elevation
The route
Loading the Badlands map
Full mapElevation2,695–2,731 ft
Plan your hike
Before you go
Parking
Safety
1 active Badlands alert
- ClosureNotch Trail closed for ladder repairsNotch Trail and all areas within 100 feet of the designated trail are closed; do not enter the closure area.Official details
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Badlands Tour Guide
Your drive to Yellow Mounds Overlook Trail, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Badlands National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Badlands audio tourRecorded for this trailhead
Yellow Mounds and Conata Basin0:00 / 0:32
“You're coming up on the Yellow Mounds and Conata Basin overlooks, where mustard-yellow hills sit below purple bands and paler ridges.”
Plays as you drive up to this trailhead in the Parkwolf Badlands Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Conata Picnic Area and Deer Haven
- Conata Basin's Ferret Comeback
- What an Oreodont's Teeth Reveal
- Homestead Overlook
- 116 audio storiesacross Badlands’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Bison, Bighorn Sheep, Prairie Dog, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 11 trails, 34 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“We recently toured Badlands, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and more! We learned so much from this app as we toured each of these sites. The audio tours are worth the money.”
Trail guide
Hiking Yellow Mounds Overlook Trail
A short walk among the colored moundsYellow Mounds Overlook Trail is an informal about 0.
Yellow Mounds Overlook Trail is an informal about 0.1-mile out-and-back from the SD-240 pullout to a nearby mound and back, on hard-packed dirt. Give it 15 to 30 minutes if you stop to look at the bands. This is a quick, close-up geology stop, not a long hike. There is no marked loop or fixed end point; the line on the map follows the short worn path to the first mound.
Keep to the short routeThe reported distances conflict: one account puts the hard-packed paths at about 0.
The reported distances conflict: one account puts the hard-packed paths at about 0.1 mile round-trip, a trail listing reports 0.3 mile, and an older exploration covers 2 miles. No official route line confirms the longer tracks, so this entry maps the short core and returns the same way. Other tracks continue among the mounds, but they are informal and can fade into open terrain.
Read the layersThe colorful sequence rises from yellow mounds to purple Interior Paleosol, gray Chadron beds…
The colorful sequence rises from yellow mounds to purple Interior Paleosol, gray Chadron beds and striped reddish Brule formations. It is worth looking back across the layers rather than treating the pullout as a one-photo stop: the bands make more sense when you can compare the low yellow slopes with the paler ridges above them.
Access and footingStart at the Yellow Mounds Overlook pullout on SD-240; there is no separate marked trailhead.
Start at the Yellow Mounds Overlook pullout on SD-240; there is no separate marked trailhead. The dirt paths are uneven. Badlands allows open hiking, but the park warns that its formations can be easier to climb than to descend, so stay with the short worn path and turn back before a slope becomes awkward. Ordinary pets are not allowed on park hiking trails.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Badlands
760 sightingsBisonMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
1,060 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
904 sightingsPrairie DogMost seen around 5 PMSighting map
333 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
304 sightingsMule DeerMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
87 sightingsCoyoteMost seen around 7 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Badlands. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
