Reeves county was the first of my eighteen county highpoints scored on this trip, and probably one of the sweetest as it normally is off-limits as it is located in the middle of a working ranch. I had proposed a Texas highpoint tour to Andy Martin, author of the county highpoints reference, and Bob Martin (no relation), author of many climbing books and a climber of amazing experience. I left Phoenix friday, March 9, around 2 p.m. and met Andy in Tucson around 4, from whence we convoyed another 400 miles into west Texas and a bushcamp at the Allamore exit off of Interstate-10 in Hudspeth County. The next morning we made our separate ways to Balmorhea to meet up with Bob. Andy got stopped by the Border Patrol as we were driving out to the highway, and I needed to make a gas stop in Van Horn anyway. We arrived in Balmorhea around 8 a.m. and started in toward the Reeves highpoint.

Bob should be given full credit with arranging access to this highpoint. He had contacted the landowner a year ago and granted access at that time, but he made the wrong peak. This time, we went as a threesome to do it right. My thanks to Larry Baldwin, the ranch manager, and Emmett McCoy, the ranch owner, for allowing us access.

The Reeves highpoint is in the Barrilla Mountains, which straddle the Reeves and Jeff Davis county line. The Barrillas are the last range before the mountains give way to the vast flatness of the Pecos River Desert. The highest point of the Barrillas is in Jeff Davis county; the Reeves highpoint is a non-descript subpeak, indistinguishable from all the rest save for a good map. We met with Larry at his headquarters, and he was most kind. He showed us a good route that used roads not shown on the topo maps. Larry was too busy to join us, so we went alone.

We left, Andy riding with Bob and me following behind. The roads were pretty good, passing through a couple gates and riding up into a canyon and then into a pasture, eventually reaching a point just north of the Hernandez Windmill, where we parked. We hiked up the remaining road to the windmill, spotted a feral pig, and continued up a rocky bulldozed clearing up the main set of hills and reaching the main ridge. From here it was easy hiking by sight to the highpoint, which had a cairn set on it. Total time hiking was about 40 minutes with about 600 feet of gain. We stayed for a bit to take in the views, which were quite nice considering we had an unobstructed view toward the east. Shortly, we made our way down and back to our vehicles, and back to Larry's place to get Andy's car- total time for this adventure was about 3 hours. Now, on to Ward county.