Sioux County sits in Nebraska's northwest corner, abutting Wyoming on the west and South Dakota to the North. It's about twice as large as most of the counties in Western Nebraska, but the population of the entire county barely nudges a thousand. There's only one town in the county, Harrison, and the land is almost totally devoted to ranching. The highpoint is within a set of hills about 10 miles northwest of Harrison, and very near the Wyoming line. As a result, it simply was not convenient to bag this highpoint while working my way up Nebraska a few days earlier. After a spell in South Dakota's Black Hills, I set out on the journey back down toward Colorado. I had plans also to visit the Goshen County (Wyoming) highpoint, and since these two counties border one another, I planned it so that I'd get both today. Earlier in the day I had made a short hike up Cement Ridge, the Crook County highpoint, about 150 miles to the north. Afterwards, I made the long drive south to the town of Lusk, arriving about noon. The weather had started out very nice today but it was slowly getting cloudy. At the very least I hoped I could avoid the really nasty stuff I had encountered yesterday while in the Black Hills.

I topped the tank in Lusk and headed east along US-20 into Nebraska, with the sign telling me it was 31 miles from Lusk to Harrison. Once in Harrison, I followed a previous trip report and worked my way north and west along local roads to get myself to within a half-mile north of the highpoint area, about 12 miles out of Harrison. The last mile was driving through unfenced range, with numerous cattle in the area, so I took it very slow. While here, I passed a fellow in his truck, and I stopped to take a GPS reading. He stopped also, and then I doubled back about 500 feet to him and introduced myself. Turns out he was the rancher whose cattle were out and about. He owns the land which I wanted to cross but did not own the highpoint bluffs to the south. The man's name is Mr. Dunn (I forgot his first name) and he was very amiable. He knew about the county highpoint and had mentioned meeting some previous visitors, and did not seem to have a problem with people hiking to it. He gave me permission to cross his land, but without the permission of the other landowner, it was still a no-go, and I was not about to ruin any of his goodwill by going out to the hills anyway and potentially getting him in hot water with the other landowner, Mr. Dunn's neighbor. So Mr. Dunn kindly gave me his name and where I might find him: either at his home about two miles back down the road, or at work in Harrison. I tried the home first but he was not in, so I ended up driving back into Harrison.

Harrison is a tiny place, with a population of less than 300 people, but it is the county seat of Sioux County. I was looking for a man named Jim Koch ("Cook") and I found him at the local lumber store as Mr. Dunn said I might. Not sure what he looked like, I entered, asked around and eventually he appeared after helping another customer. I told him who I was and what I was up to and he quickly gave me his okay to enter his land. He was very pleasant and even drew me a rough map showing a gate I could use to enter and thereby cut off some hiking distance. It also absolved me of crossing Mr. Dunn's land, although I do appreciate his willingness to let me do so if need be, and his helpfulness in tracking down Jim. So, with all that, I headed back north and west again about 10 miles to a very non-descript gate along Pleasant Ridge Road. I opened the wire-stick gate, drove in, closed the gate, and followed some rutted tracks in the low grass for about a mile to a point just south of the eastern-most highpoint area. I decided this was good enough; I was about one air-mile southeast of the probable highest point and felt a good walk among the grassy hills would be good for me. It was about one-ish when I actually got moving.

The highpoint of Sioux County is mainly comprised of a set of hills that form a rough "C" shape, covering about a mile from tip to tip. There are 25 separate areas in all that breach the 5,240-foot level in this C (there are two more areas about a mile west that are tiny and have been shown not to be the highpoint. I skipped these entirely). However, of the 25 areas, about 20 can be immediately disregarded, narrowing the field down to a more manageable handful of contenders. From my vehicle, I walked north to the first area, then walked from high-hill to high-hill, always heading toward what seemed higher. Mostly everything seemed to be equally high; in this way I figured I visited all of the realistic contenders along the way. Eventually I came upon the northernmost area, marked by the Kennedy Benchmark and two old relic buildings. The map reported a radio tower here, but if there was one, it's long since been removed. At some point in the near past, John Mitchler and Dave Covill, authors of the Colorado County Highpoints book, came to the Sioux highpoint hills and using some good sight levels, showed conclusively that this northern hill is the highest, although a couple of hills to the east (where I came) were close. I stuck around briefly but then kept moving. I ventured south to maybe one more decent hill but after that, nothing looked like a contender so I beelined back to my vehicle, which I could see about a mile yonder sitting up on a small rise. The entire round trip covered about 2.5 miles and took me about an hour. The weather was holding but the sky was now mostly clouds, and some looked like business. I drove back out to the main road and went back to Harrison to have a brief visit. Then, back to Lusk, where I had lunch at a Subway Sammy Shop. The workers there, none older than 18 it seemed, had the hip-hop really blasting. I called my wife from there to check in, and then drove west to gain the Goshen County highpoint. The weather was now really intimidating. I kept my eye on one set of clouds to my north that seemed to be of the twister persuasion. As usual, however, I didn't see any.