Bob Martin, Andy Martin and I had just finished the Ward County highpoint and we had time for one more before the sun set. From the town of Pyote on Interstate-20, we took TX-115 through Wink to Kermit, then TX-302 east to the town of Notrees, which is a very descriptive name for this part of Texas. In Notrees, we took a major dirt road north, coming to a split about 200 feet off the highway. For the Ector county highpoint, we took the left road (For Winkler county, which we did the next morning, we took the right road). As usual, Andy drove in a bit, parked his car in an out of the way spot, then rode shotgun with Bob, while I followed. We went north about a mile, then west about another mile to a large cattle grate, at which time a distinct little hill stood out in front of us, the Ector county highpoint. We drove to this hill, about another mile along a sandy track after the cattle grate, parked and scampered up to its top. Bob had climbed this same hill about a year earlier; for Andy and me, it was our first ascent.

There is strong reason to believe this hill is not natural. It borders a large gravel pit and may have been an old refuse pile when they were digging out the pit. If it is, it's an old pile as it has much vegetation on it. Also, this part of Texas is so flat that such a hill would likely not be natural, even though strange things sometimes happen. But just to be sure, Andy identified two natural closed contours of 3,360-feet within a 1-mile radius of said hill. We descended back to our vehicles, drove up another sandy track a bit, then hiked out to these areas. We followed some fence lines and scaled some fences (tricky in places), and made a good-faith effort in this flat expanse of land. We also hiked up another small hill not shown on the topo about a half-mile west of the first hill. Like the first, it is probably not natural but the well-established flora on it suggests it's been there a long time.

We were back to our vehicles at sundown. We drove back to Andy's car, then drove back to our first hill and car-camped there for the night. A full moon and mostly clear skies lit up the landscape, while the percussive sound of nearby oil pumps and the ever-present sulphur smell reminded us what this region does for a living. (We may have been "officially" not allowed to camp where we did, but no one bothered us.)

The Winkler County highpoint is not far from here and we managed to visit that one the next morning.