Olkahoma's High Point - "Black Mesa"

Olkahoma's high point is Black Mesa at 4,973 feet. Located not far from the Colorado-Olkahoma border, we left the town of Lamar were we stayed the night and under bright blue skies and hot morning winds left that Saturday 15th June for the town of Kenton, OK. Following the GPS, we were led along unpaved dirt roads though the countryside - first through flat lands, and then eventually driving in the valley between some higher canyon like mountains before getting back to state road 325. The GPS said it would take us over an hour or so, it took us three!

Just before you arrive into the very small town of Kenton, you will see a sign for "Black Mesa Nature Preserve" and following the road which seems to go around the Black Mesa mountain, we arrived at the Black Mesa Summit Trailhead parking lot. It was a just before 1pm.

Keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes (we had read many stories of them in the area), we got ready and was on the trail by 1pm as the hot sun shone high above our heads. It was easily over 90 degrees Fahrenheit but luckily dry heat and not too humid.

The hike took us along the flat trail which circled the Black Mesa mountain in terrain which seems more like a flat dry desert with a few random cows grazing. Under the hot sun, the heat was quite untolerable given the lack of shade and after an hour or so, I was starting to feel sick. My face was bright red and apparently I was getting heat exhaustion symptions so we took it slow (I was determined to make the summit!). A tip - don't wear a waterproof hat which doesn't breathe when hiking under the top sun! Over an hour and a half of hiking, we started to hike up the side of the Mesa, climbing in elevation before arriving to the top of the flat Mesa. After another half hour of hiking along the flat trail at the top, we arrived at the prominent 9 foot high native granite monument standing all by itself in the flat surroundings.

The monument highlighted the distances to major cities and areas. Texas was only 31miles away to the South, Kansas 53 miles to the East, Coloradio 4.7 miles to the North and New Mexico 1,299 feet to the West! New York was 1,605 miles away so we were far away from home! We took a few photos, signed the register and had a quick lunch in the shade of the monument before heading back towards the trailhead.

The hike back, whilst not the longest we had done, was tiring and "getting old" after the long hours under the direct hot sun and we were longing to see the car as we looked into the distance. That's the problem with walking on flat land - things just don't seem to get closer given there are no prominent landmarks to compare distance and everything around you looks the same. We luckily stumbled back to the car at 5pm tired as this was the first decent hike we had done in a while, espeically in the heat. We got in the car and headed to Texas.