Fresh off our successful Reeves county adventure, Andy Martin, Bob Martin and I made a stop in the town of Balmorhea for lunch, and then drove the 50 or so miles to the Ward county highpoint region. This county's highpoint had never been deliberately hiked before, so we three would be setting precedent with our truly amazing, historic hike. From Balmorhea, we followed TX-17 to Pecos, then Interstate-20 and FM-516 through Barstow to FM-2355, our access road. It didn't look promising: all the roads leading off of FM-2355 had gates and unfriendly signs, but our road was wide open with no restrictive signs. The access road is about 10 miles northeast of Barstow, where FM-2355 makes a dogleg to the right. The road is well marked with oil-lease signs, many of them mentioning "University Lands" leases. We went in, then Andy stowed his car and rode with Bob, and I followed.

This highpoint definitely requires the USGS 7.5 degree topo maps, not only for the highpoints themselves but for the access roads. We followed the main road as it went northish, then westish, then northish again, then northwestish, a total of about 6 miles. Just before this road crosses a cattle grate, we made a left turn onto a two-track dirt and sand road that probably would stop most passenger cars, although we never needed 4-wheel drive. Andy navigated, Bob led, and I followed. We passed through a gate, then immediately turned left and followed the fence to a corner, then turned right and followed another fence to another corner, where we stopped and parked. By dumb luck, we were at one of the 7 candidate areas for the Ward county highpoint. We shimmied under the fence and paced the area, and also the area about 500 feet to the south, taking care of another area. We had 2 of the 7 areas done.

The third area was about a mile to the southwest and held the USGS Benchmark "Dunn". We walked through the scrubby flat desert, followed some oil and gas roads, and eventually found the benchmark. Here, we took some photos. Believe it or not, we were at the edge of some bluffs that dropped about 200-300 feet down, offering us a pretty nice little view out into the desert. After a few minutes at Dunn, where we set up a cairn and deposited a register, we went east again toward the 4th area and 3 other very tiny areas.

This 4th area was just as flat and non-descript as the first three, but we made a good-faith effort to get ourselves inside the highest contour. The other three areas are extremely tiny, encompassing maybe a few hundred square feet, and difficult to find, so we just sort of zig-zagged around and hoped we got lucky. These three little areas likely did not contain the highest point. It was not clear which of the four larger areas did. After a few minutes, we walked back toward our trucks and made the drive out. It was now about 5 p.m. and we had time for one more: Ector county just up the road.