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Clean-Up Tour, May & Sept., 2002 |
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On my Veteran's Day Tour here in November 2000, I missed a few due to muddy roads, time, and inconvenient locations. During 2002 I made two trips to the region. While these remaining counties weren't the focus for either visit, I took advantage of the opportunity to hit the remaining five that I had missed. In doing so I 'completed' the top three tiers of north Texas county highpoints.
Dallam County is the extreme northwestern-most county in Texas, right where Oklahoma and New Mexico come together. The city of Clayton in New Mexico is about 10 miles away, and I've been there a couple of times, but never had bothered with the Dallam highpoint until now. I was starting my 10-day highpoint binge and I'd had my first success in nearby Union County, New Mexico.
From Clayton, I drove to the scraggly town of Texline and took local roads past some homes to a major dirt road heading due north out of town, called Shamburger Road. After about 4 miles, I found the highpoint area and found a good place to park. The highpoint is located in a fallow field about 3/4 mile west of the road, and is just a slight rise in the land. I hopped the fence and walked briskly, following cow paths through the scrub. After about a half-mile I trended away from the east-west fence line and out to the apparent top of the gentle rise. Happy, I returned to my vehicle, just as some old couple was pulling up... but they didn't stop. Probably wondering what I was doing.
From here I made a trip to check out Hartley County, just to the south, but the road net became confusing and I gave up on the effort, so I got back on the main highways and headed toward Amarillo and a date with Potter county. Follow up note: I did succeed on Hartley County when I visited it in September 2002 after the highpointers convention in Oklahoma that weekend (see further down on this page).
I came to the Potter County highpoint area from the town of Wildorado on Interstate-40, about 20 miles west of Amarillo in neighboring Oldham county. In Wildorado I went north toward the water tower then east along another principal road back toward the Potter county line. The road goes from bad to worse... and this is when it's dry! However, my truck could easily handle the loose dirt and where I parked offered me some privacy as it was a good mile from the main roads in the area. I parked and hopped a gate. Although the land is pretty flat, there are good navigation items (manmade stuff like fences and windmills) for easily nabbing these highpoints.
The first of the three candidate areas is north a half-mile along a fence line near where I parked. It's apparent when the land rises and crests, and I found two large logs just sitting on the ground. The second area has a windmill and a rutted road leading to it, about 3/4 mile to the east-southeast. Again, easy walking. The third area is the largest area and probably contains the highpoint, and is about another 1/2 mile of walking eastward, with a slight northeast trend. In this case I just followed the lay of the land and walked the large contour. Once satisfied, I beelined the mile-plus back to my truck.
The weather was interesting. Above me was cloudy and blue, but not too bad. It was humid and warm, about 80. But about 30 miles to my south was an enormous thunderstorm, black as night and real threatening. I headed back toward Amarillo then south a tiny bit to the town of Washburn to scout the Armstrong County highpoints. On one of the roads I came upon a group of storm chasers with lots of fancy gear assessing the storm. I stopped and chatted with them... they all had German accents! In their opinion, they didn't think this storm was going to spawn twisters, although I have to admit it looked pretty nasty to my eyes! As I drove east along Interstate-40 into Oklahoma, this storm pretty much chased me the entire way, but I didn't get hit hard by it until I was safely in my hotel in Elk City. Fortunately it was just a lot of rain and no twisters. Those Germs were corrrect!
Ochiltree County is a farm- and ranch-county in far northern Texas, right up on the Oklahoma border. The highpoint of the county is a single area of 3,120 feet in its extreme southwest corner, in the middle of a field. In November 2000 I visited this area but was turned back by extremely muddy roads which my little rental wouldn't have been able to handle. I drove a hardpack south into Roberts County, then west along some farm roads. Eyeballing the area, the highpoint looked to be an invisible point out in a field to my north slighlty (I'd actually crossed into Roberts County before turning back). A huge mud pit pretty much stopped any forward progress, and I opted not to try it at this time.
So here I was, back in the area, picking off a batch of Oklahoma county highpoints, and making my way across the Okie panhandle, when I decided to make a side trip and revisit Ochiltree's apex. This time, the weather was dry and I had my truck. I drove to where I had to turn back in 2000, and parked just south of the highpoint area in Roberts County. Even in this dry weather, the road seems to possess a perpetual muddy spot for some reason. But my truck easily crossed this gooey patch, and parked due south of the highpoint near a gas-well road. From this gas-well road, an unmarked road cut of some sort goes northwest into the highpoint area. I walked this road, and it was very muddy. After a short goopy walk I returned to my truck and did my best to kick the mud free from my boots. Where is the actual highpoint? Who knows. The field was planted (?) with knee-high leafy things. I was mostly concerned about snakes. The road cut helped, but at best, it's a guessing game. I didn't dally and got moving. This weas it for Texas until September. Read on....
Hartley county defeated me earlier this year (May) when I came in from what looked like a reasonable road net from the New Mexico side, as the highpoint is no more than a short stroll inside the Texas state line along the New Mexican border. However, try as I might I could get no closer than 3 air-miles to the highpoint from the New Mexico side and even then wccasn't sure if the maze of sketchy roads on the map were accurate. Not wanting to get hopelessly turned around and knowing I'd be back in September for the Highpointers Convention, I gave up and intended to retry again at that time.
So September rolled around and I found myself with 200 of my closest friends at Camp Billy Joe in Kenton, Oklahoma, for the convention. That Sunday (today, the 22nd), Bob Packard, Roy Wallen and I set out together to tackle this remote highpoint. For Bob, it would add to his goal of every county highpoint in the USA over 4,000 feet. Roy was just plain interested. For me, this would complete northern Texas (i.e. the top three tiers of counties, all 15 of them). We left Kenton in a convoy and took a series of local paved roads into Texas toward the town of Texline. After a brief stop to bid adieu to Ken Akerman who followed us in order to get Dallam county, we waited for a train to pass then followed more roads south, eventually reaching the junction of FM-296 and TX-102 right on the border of New Mexico in southwestern Dallam county. From here we went south 4 miles along a decent dirt road to a section corner and the junction with Pipas Road (our southerly road) and South Sedan Rd. The plan was to pile into Roy's SUV and he'd drive the remaining 5+ miles south toward the Hartley highpoint. While standing around and getting ready, a local rolled up in his truck to see what we were up to. Turns out he lives at the house a mile and a half in on this road. Once we showed him our maps and chatted with him, he seemed pretty content to let us go on. Nice guy- Bob Shorter is his name. He gave us some good local information about the area. He noted that a very narrow strip of land about 1/8 mile wide and who-knows-how-many miles long, running along the TX-NM border, is considered "No Man's Land" since it was never officially accounted for when the two states established their boundaries. The township plats coming west from Texas and east from New Mexico didn't line up exact. For practical purposes, that land went to New Mexico. He lives on a stretch of that land, while our route would basically follow this geographical-political oddity. The name seemed appropriate given our remoteness so I use it here, unofficially, of course.
The drive itself went fine. The first 2 miles or so, past Mr. Shorter's home (and his dozen or so big dogs), was along decent sandy road. We then passed a gas well and then followed a poorer sandy two-track, regularly using "bypasses" into the brush to avoid big nasty mudpits from recent rains. Nevertheless we needed 4wd-low and took it very slow. We passed one gate at about 2.5 miles, then slid and skidded another 2 miles (slightly less) to another gate, where we parked. It was less than a mile to the highpoint, a single hilly pile of sand in this endless sea of "blowsand", to use Mr. Shorter's term. Basically low sand dunes covered in thickish scrub. Bob and I hiked west of the fence along the road cut (presumably placing us in New Mexico) while Roy stayed on the other side, inside Texas, hiking amid the brush. A yelp and a leap later on Roy's part convinced him to join us on the open road... he'd nearly stepped on a hissing rattlesnake, and I heard the rattle from 30 feet away! We hiked past a stock pond then crossed the fence for the final easy walk up the low scrubby hill. Talk about remote! In all directions all we could see was endless scrubbiness. Some windmills and buildings were in the viewing panorama. We could make out some of the volcanic remnant hills up by Clayton NM, about 30 miles north. After a quick visit, we returned to Roy's SUV then out to our trucks where we parted ways. Roy back to California while Bob and I went east into Dalhart for lunch then south to get the Randall County highpoint.
After bagging the Hartley County highpoint earlier in the day, Bob Packard and I drove the 90 miles or so south along the lonely but pretty stretch of highway US-385 from Dalhart through Channing, Vega and on to Hereford. Much of the stretch between Channing and Vega, about 35 miles or so, was through the expansive river basin and badlands of the Canadian River. Plenty of rolling, tree-covered hills and pretty vistas. The stretch from Vega to Hereford, on the other hand, was the more typical plane-flat countryside I'm used to up here. We arrived in Hereford about 3 p.m. and took FM-1259 southeast out of town and some local roads to a point just south of the Randall county highpoint. We had to make an educated guess; it is totally flat out here and the only points of reference were some windmills and various fence lines. We parked due south of a windmill at elevation 3,888 ft. I had been here in November 2000, but felt uncomfortable trying this highpoint at the time as about 2 or 3 vehicles came rumbling down this remote road while I was parked, scanning the area. I figured I might draw suspicion so I moved on. With Bob around, and apparently no one else for miles on this Sunday afternoon, I felt a little more comfortable.
So we got started in. We scaled the fence then started walking due north about a half-mile to this windmill, which is on the Happy Hereford Ranch. We could see cattle about a mile east, and the area was dotted with mounds of cattle poop, cactus, bones and vermin holes. However, there was no scrub to speak of; the cattle have apparently eaten or trampled any living thing for miles. Nothing higher than an inch grows here, else it gets eaten. Once we reached the windmill we proceeded at a north-northwest bearing to get within the lone 3,890-foot contour that pokes into Randall county from neighboring Deaf Smith county. After another quarter-mile or so we felt we were within the contour area. Bob took bearings from our first windmill, now to our SSE, and another windmill at elevation 3,879 feet to our NNE, and verified we were very likely to definitely within the contour. A fence line to our west is well inside Deaf Smith county, so we stayed away from it. After some very minor pacing, and a wind-sprint from Bob, we decided to call Randall good and start on our way out. Back at the road we parted ways: Bob east a little more to Swisher's highpoint, and me back to Amarillo to clean up and fly home, a nice culmination to a great weekend of highpointing, driving and meeting tons of new people. I ended up putting 1,031 miles on my rental Ford Ranger truck- it had had 3 miles on it when I picked it up!
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(c) 2000, 2006 Scott Surgent. For entertainment purposes only. This report is not meant to replace maps, compass, gps and other common sense hiking/navigation items. Neither I nor the webhost can be held responsible for unfortunate situations that may arise based on these trip reports. Conditions (physical and legal) change over time! Some of these hikes are major mountaineering or backpacking endeavors that require skill, proper gear, proper fitness and general experience. |