My Life Outdoors

I want to say thank you to Texas Mountain Trail Daily Photo (TMTDP) for featuring a series of photographs from My Life Outdoors. If you get the opportunity to check out TMTDP or their website, Texas Mountain Trail, you will learn a lot about all the wonderful things far west Texas has to offer. The Texas Mountain Trail is a non-profit organization that seeks to make Texas’ six westernmost counties become more visitor friendly. Their website offers detailed information about hiking, biking, cycling, running, camping, birding, and even train spotting in far west Texas.

Vast, beautiful, remote, solitude, friendly, hot, unique…these are just a few words that describe far west Texas. Having lived in Texas all my life, and having seen a large portion of a large state, I have to say that west Texas has become one of my favorite regions. The thing that strikes me most about west Texas is the mountains. While I was living in the DFW area I knew Texas had some “hills” (as I thought of them) somewhere out west, but I never knew just how wrong I was. With the highest points in Texas reaching far above 8,000 feet and rising more than 3,000 feet above their surrounding landscapes you can’t say Texas has only “hills.” These are true mountainous areas with truly rugged, remote, difficult summits.

A good friend of mine who grew up climbing the Wyoming Tetons once commented that Texas summits where some of the more difficult and technical hikes he had set out on. You could spend a long time just trying to summit all the peaks in Texas and have a long list of bragging rights to go along with it. Not only that but you won’t find the crowds that exist trucking up the fourteeners in Colorado.

I encourage you…next time you set out to summit a lonely peak…consider a Texas peak. It’s a different kind of remote out here. I think you will be surprised (as I was) at what you find.

Here is a list of Texas’ highest peaks: Thank you to Paul at Paul’s Texas Peaks List who accumulated this information.