The Alpine Slide in Keystone, South Dakota should definitely be on your Black Hills Bucket List! The Alpine Slide is actually one of many attractions within the Rushmore Tramway Adventures park in Keystone, South Dakota. However, due to time constraints and cost, we decided to just do the Alpine Slide (see the “what we thought” section below for more information on why we decided not to do the other attractions, as well as video of my son and husband going down the slide).
About the Alpine Slide
The 2000 ft Alpine Slide is a bobsled type slide that travels down the hill allowing the rider to control the speed with a simple handbrake. It has several dips and turns that can make it either a heart-racing experience or site seeing experience depending on the speed in which you decide to descent. A ski lift takes you to the top where you pick up your cart and choose the lane you want to go down (they have both a fast and slow lane). The slow lane is also where riders that will be riding with small children will hop on too.
About Rushmore Tramway Adventures
In addition to the Alpine Slide, patrons can choose from several other attractions to participate in:
Aeriel Adventure Park: The above ground park consists of several courses with varying degrees of difficulty. Platforms connect almost 100 different elements such as suspended ladders and bridges, trapeze and tubes, cables, rings, and zip lines. No worries about falling though, because you will be in a harness. You have 90 minutes to complete the course. Prices for the aerial park are $39 for a child and $49 for an adult as of July 2017.
Zip Line: The 800 ft zip lines allows friends to race to the bottom reaching speeds of almost 40 mph (according to their website). The cost for this is $20 per person.
Free-Fall Jump Tower: Raising 60 ft into the air the jump tower allows you to fall about 25 ft while you are attached to a bungee harness. The cost is $15 per person per jump.
Scenic Chairlift: According to their website, “The scenic chairlift allows people of all ages to enjoy a full nature immersion as you float through the Ponderosa Pines on your way towards our mountain-top summit.” The cost for this is $6 for children and $10 for ages 7 & up.
Alpine Slide: 2000 ft bobsled type slide. Cost is $6 for kids and $12 for ages 7 and up. That is per ride per person. They do have packages.
Our Thoughts
While the alpine slide was fun and we were hoping to do everything else, the prices were rather steep. Even with the packages we would have spent almost $400 just to each ride the slide twice, do the zip line once, jump tower once, and the aerial park once. We ended up getting the 5-slide pass for $50 which is shareable. That means we each got to ride the slide once, and my husband got to ride it an additional time to see how fast he could go (and of course he ended up wiping out, make sure you watch the video!) as we all went pretty slow at first since we didn’t know what to expect.
All in all the slide was ok. We are glad we did it once, but even the teenagers weren’t too thrilled about it after they were done. I would recommend adding at least the alpine slide and the chairlift to your Black Hills Bucket List, just to say you did it!
Video
Park Info
Location:
203 Cemetery Rd, Keystone, SD 57751
Phone: 605.666.4478
Have you done the Alpine Slide? If so, what did you think?
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That looked like a lot of fun! Have you ever rode an alpine roller coaster? I rode one in Gatlinburg, TN and loved it!
We have! In fact, did it a couple of days before this! It was awesome and I will have a blog post on the Alpine Coaster up on the blog pretty soon with video!
How long would you allow for the alpine slide?
We are hoping to stop after Wind Cave before horseback riding, but cannot be late to the horseback riding appt.
We were there for about 1.5 hours if memory serves me correctly. Granted there are more things to do there than just the slide, but we only did the slide twice. If you plan on doing the other attractions there you will need to plan for more time.