in the black hills of south dakota we attend the twenty eighth annual two thousand and thirteen crazy horse folks march once again we are out at the crazy horse memorial for the twenty eighth annual two thousand and thirteen folks march and people are signing in and lining up and it has just started as you can see people are showing their green cards that they fill out sign their names to somewhere along here my brother will be coming by he's got his green card and i will catch up to him in just a second please stay on the trail and as they continue down i will see how the trail goes this year now i'm going to cut in line so my green card and get going so as the folks are coming through the trail and heading up and around i'm going to try to catch up to my brother somewhere over this way so as the folks are coming down i have tied up with my brother but and it does help to have good walking shoes or boots because you never know what kind of trail you're going to come across they were able to catch that but it looks like i see a whole bunch of good trees in the background there so now i have to it was kind of like this last year big downhill so we'll see how it goes and i seem to me that it circled back up around so will continue so along the way you will see the signs pointing the direction so you know for sure and so we just came down this way last year we went back up that way so this year we're going further over and depending upon the trail some of the ruts are deeper than others and we have to watch out for cowboys because the cows do mostly through here sometimes people will stop for picture  we are definitely going a different route and usually going further out of the way and there are things take like i said marking the path even as it narrows down between these shrubs and as you're walking you never know if you're going to run into a tree or something in the road pathway and so it's narrowing down again here in the corner which up to my brother around the corner from the looks of it with the barb wire there looks like we might actually be at one of the corners  and it looks like really we're going back uphill lots of logs in the way that i watch a step but it's more of a gradual incline as opposed to the steeper one of last year so far logs you say you have to have good walking shoes boots walking stick isn't a bad idea if you need one over the logs and a gradual  little bit of a slow down as we're coming out of the zig zagging woods because it's a checkpoint and there are four checkpoints along the way and each one is man it is checkpoint one where there are also be santa canned fruits and juices and things for sale and you have to get your card signed off just like those folks are doing so that's custer use wrestling and parents that are helping out that one to raise money and now we are on a and it's our favorite thing lad old and we continue on so it's going to be a little harder to catch up to my brother now i was planning to run up the hill a little bit more efficiency with the wind blowing orange take marking the trail keep it going in the right direction  as we continue up the hill almost single filed after the side resting a little bit that will happen periodic place throughout the entire course out a little bit up there but i can't tell you a lot of this trail has been single person going through it before sometimes winding out just a little bit plan it's a very interesting tra different landscape and if ever viewed before  quite interesting well that's kind of i am thoroughly confused as to where the carving itself is this because we're coming off this way and not going back either way we're actually going further up this way around we'll see what happens just turned another corner and you go you did a great job oh ok thank you i was just handed a brownie the first real close glimpse of the side and those benchmarks have really really gone in from the first years i've seen th narrowed in quite a lot i remember when those benchmarks were light enough to drive a couple of cars  the kid i don't know so it looks like you could probably get a good snack anyway and he will see what happens see if i catch up to that lady and her for the brownie if she gave me well the downhill was short lived because we're going right back up and up we are going wind is blowing in the monument is right over here if you come through so checkpoint three looks pretty close to the mountain here i see some folks up there and checkpoint three  actually works for the company for the gentleman who donated millions of dollars to denise and for we will continue one go check point four up to the  and as we come up around the corner we have one of the lakes stands next up at the carving got another little up hill and up around the corner over here and we'll get much much closer and as you come up around the corner another view for getting kind of shot road down that way is where we will come back down so we're actually a bit the road up another steep and sharp turn and we're almost there probably checkpoint one is almost at the very top little bit of a fake out and it levels out here to go downhill and it will then go back i feel again and you can see it's trying to get warm the layers are coming up and in the distance there we see people having already come back down and those that are coming up are now going up the main road over as we continue up the service road which will be the one where we come down like these folks are jogging down up to checkpoint one and with any of the checkpoints they are santa can and as you come up hand them your card sign it  and what organization are you representing kester volleyball the checkpoint one is custer volleyball they're trying to raise funds they want you to buy snacks and things like that that they might have and then we'll go up around one or two more corners and we're there so i know my brother somewhere at the top at this point going to folks coming down the hill or they can come down that way but we stuck to go up and around the corner and walk up there but even this gentleman just propose so you never know what's going to happen and from the view on top we can see a lot of ground where it once was green and the green was so deep and dark and sick that it looked black at a distance and the black forest but now you can see large swath infected and and on the other side down the trail you can see people still coming up congress votes for the president telling them that they need to clear out the dead trees to get rid of the bugs that are killing the trees otherwise there will be no force left here even that hill in the background there anyway way in the background there that when this brown mostly to unbelievable and a lot of those limbs that we saw earlier are limbs and they're not diseased but they are dead and so they can be used for burning but it has the main portion of it from like the first thirty feet  so the bugs get into and just decimate the tree said we will set the camera up and talk about our experience well that's the first time in all these years that i've been doing this that we've had two proposals now by my brother up here and then we will have our discussion ok very very different route this year and actually went out towards i think the borderline of the properties well we've barbwire so i'm assuming that's a borderline yeah  d again it is once a year it's the first weekend in june the first full weekend in june so next year for two thousand and fourteen it's go be like the sixth and seventh or something i forget what the actual date is because the first is on a sunday so i remember that so well it won't be it'll be the first full week now for three cans and three dollars you get to do this wonderful thing raising lots and lots of money not only  organizations of the indian culture here for their food drives i don't remember exactly which ones but maybe someone can yell it to me no lady just hand it to me she said i was doing a good job she just handed me a brownie and it's like ok war and it's good just the carrot i mean i mentioned it earlier but i've actually seen some of it here but i saved it so and unfortunately there's a whole lot of dead trees right now but hopefully i mentioned just a short time ago that you know you can call the forestry call your congress people contact obama and say hey get the fund get to work on this get these disease trees out here to save the rest of the forest  but anyway so we had a good time of course for more information visit crazy horse memorial dot org and you can also find th  on facebook and like them there and it is a wonderful wonderful event each year and as you may have seen from the earlier footage they have done tremendous work in carving away those benchmarks that have been there for years and years and i am just amazed at how different it   his lifetime so and he's in the seventy's i mean it might get done and might well take a look at a few of the areas as we head back now as you can see there are lots of people see bill coming up in a service truck coming down they have made tremendous progress and shaving off the side l almost straight down again and oh yes we're go past closer with the books march but look at that they have me tremendous progress so as it turns out sometimes we have actually come straight down this direction which i think we passed by the burial spot when we go that direction but this year we came around the loop before heading down and the finish line is at the top of the hill the at the start of the race excuse me the watch box march some people race it though but we have this gentleman and you are j glanzer on the trail master for both march what exactly does trail master means well we just have to mark the trail and set it up so no one gets lost on the way up to the top we do change a trail once in a while if we can you know turns on the weather and the terrain and not a whole lot of options for us but make a little difference every once in a while like this year we did go down into the lower part and done an about five years i was gonna say some i don't remember seeing the barbed wire fence line so you're i guess we were at the edge of the property line at one point there yeah you're right down at the bottom down there were requests this year or so and we were down there about every four five years now for some reason it just felt longer than this year and i mean last year it was it was like way way down because of all the logging that was being done and way way  almost a straight shot that seemed to take up a lot of the actual folks march but this year it was winding all over the place i mean it was good i liked it it just seemed like it was  than maybe it's because people were kind of going slow through the one person trail parts and things like that but speak to that a little bit yeah well we did like say make a little different trail and kind of fallen down through the trees and kind of a more secluded area downer but it's not any shorter than of never has been and not ever over ten k no because you guys actually kind of mandated for that you have to have it you can't be more well six point two mile or ten k yeah that's what we try to go for yeah and and so you're one of those of a couple of the folks that actually map it out each year y troll master for like ten years now any i did you get any ideas for next year already and all it's probably maybe stay the same next year depends on the weather but once again we are now looking at the mountain and we have had dogs with me and again your title is i'm the media relations coordinator  and this year just in the last ten months since the turn just of last year i know i've been noticing and commenting already a huge huge difference in what you're noticing and it's right and from this vantage point it would be right above the tree level and what the crew is been concentrating on completing the rough shape you know that horse's head and there are three hundred forty to three hundred sixty feet below the top of the crazy horse head the significance is that we are at right now at the tail and that to essentially production mining style of work that then has the mountain gives them the rough shape of the horse's head with and about twenty feet of what's going to be final and then the other thing that you're noticing up on top of the arm where all the hikers are today is some of the excavating equipment they're about to begin the work to find a hand and the extended index finger what that means is we're about to begin finishing the horse's head so that'll be the next step and all of this is happened within the fifteen years since the face was completed and dedicated in going back to those aren't familiar with the story seen any sanford is a billionaire philanthropist based out of sioux falls south dakota does many things across the country a lot of it with health care and particularly health care that helps children it became a friend of this project put forth a five million dollars challenge grant public took great took him on with his challenge grant he offered five million on a dollar for dollar public kicked in five million as well as donations of equipment donations of services donations of explosive material so he would match that one then he also kicked in the money that built the first building for the indian university of north america crazy horse and friends of his kicked in a five million dollar endowme most on the investments funds that operation so all in all teach any sanford is responsible for about twenty million dollars of the public to help in this project which is going to be sixty five years old this year on june third which because today is june the first as we're shooting this but i won't air for a while but monday will be june third yes and june third we'll know in addition to this saturday sunday we have the hikers on monday the third will be taking some of the handicapped people who can't walk up on their own and then on tuesday the fourth at three o'clock we'll have the commemorative glass that we do every year to recall that started in  eighty eight now with the blessed especially with it getting much thinner you can't do those huge blasts as much anymore those large multi faith thousand ton blasts at least at the moment now you're in the neighborhood of between three hundred to five hundred to six hundred tons which is the public of is accustomed to much larger blasts they won't be disappointed because what's happening now is your so close to what's going to be the rough shape of a horse's head those blasts although less tons you begin to immediately notice oh yeah there's the horses nostrils there's the horses muzzle it's we're getting that close t denn sanford has been responsible for some huge this changes i've been coming this way for fifteen years so i've seen a lot of changes yes you have you among the people that write after the dedication of that face and you'll often see maybe online comments that will say well nothing ever happens up there and what's unfortunate about the position of the visitor center to that mountain is it's the flat two dimensional view in the fifteen years since you've been you know here in everything from the hole through the mountain that tunnel that is under the arm that separates the torso of the writer from the morses mane and the horse's head everything on that mountain from that tunnel down close to two hundred feet has been thinned almost two hundred feet in saul there's been quite a bit of change and now you're near the end of that mining style of work that's going to create the shape of the horse's head that pretty soon you're going to see to find it's going to be that same process of using the torch using other new technology and danny sanford one of the things that he has helped fund is indeed that excavator that you saw when you were up on the arm of the great part about that particular machine is it allows the operator to run the drilling equipment with remote control so this is very similar in that it requires drilling with steel into granite to then create the hole to put in the explosives to break the rock to create the artwork at mount rushmore you saw guys who are literally in leather slings hanging over the side of a mountain using air power drills here it's all gas powered it's all self contained the man is never in danger because he can stand on a flat surface and let the machine take all the punishment and do all that do all the heavy labor well i know that you're also busy and we're going to also sheila bit of footage at the facility but of course for more information w w w crazyhorse memorial dot a large e and of course now on facebook and absolutely the crazy horse memorial facebook page and a lot of folks of the tuned in we've got a little over thirty five thousand fans at the moment and the two thousand and fourteen folks march will be in june second and third but the cool part about twenty thirty first two thousand and fourteen right for two thousand and fourteen will be the second and third but in two thousand and thirteen remember the autumn book smart well it ok ok well no ok there is  and rounding up of those animals and a lot of major motion pictures that's going to happen on friday the twenty seventh that following saturday sunday there will be a fairly major margera in the park and then and for those who are even taking the high clearance you wouldn't want to come back in september your route will be a little different than what you took today ok and that website again is top of your w w crazyhorse memorial dot a large e and on facebook crazy horse memorial right thank you and we will head back inside but this episode we will not be taking a tour of it he will do that during our sturgis footage i will take a look around just a little bit for closing up this episode of course you have a tourist sho for all kinds of i well as a performance area act this way in the new edition it's more of a timeline of the memorial and there's a whole big story about that too but you have to move forward and once you go  atmosphere there is a sculpture studio and workshop and in this building they need american culture and education center perth where you can actually meet and talk to the various designers more about the twenty ninth annual crazy horse folks march crane june seventh in a two thousand and fourteen by visiting crazy horse memorial dot org please visit my archive page at seattle community media dot org slash no slash one two three seven four slash list shows and as always thank you for watching adventure t