The obvious choices for a West Texas outdoorsman are sometimes overlooked by our community, exhibit A: Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Before you stop reading, just know that there are probably things that you haven’t done in this area. The canyon, located about 110 miles North of Lubbock, is second largest in the nation and has more to offer than car-camping. This beautiful location has mountain biking, backpacking and rock climbing (believe it or not).
The activities here are still pretty obvious to most people. It’s just very easy for me to forget about the splendor of the canyon. The way the earth falls away as you drive down into its floor is something that shouldn’t be easy to forget, but the assumptions made about the plains can sometimes eat away at the beauty of this place in my mind. So, I think it’s important to keep Palo Duro close. People have been visiting this area to get lost in its wandering walls for decades, and that is for a reason.
Palo Duro Canyon State Park is an exciting place and here’s why: it’s undeveloped. You won’t walk around with thousands of other tourists, having park rangers yell and tell you not to touch the scenery. Because it is hidden by the monotony of the South Plains, not too many people crowd its two-lane roads. This does have its pros and cons, but it does make for an exciting weekend. The rule for backpacking explains that you must walk 30 minutes before setting up camp. The sheer fact that there is such a subjective law given to backpacking shows that there is freedom to be had in the canyon.
There are no backpacking and climbing guides to Palo Duro, just 29,000 acres to explore and make your own adventure. Just in the five years that I have lived in Lubbock, I have heard rumors of hidden crags and cliffs far back in the canyon just waiting to get their first ascent. Recently a friend and I made a trip to Palo Duro to try our hand at climbing in the canyon. I’ll be honest and say that it wasn’t easy to find and it wasn’t exactly safe, but we enjoyed the adventure of it all (plus the surprisingly good bouldering and the boulder garden).
Every time I visit the park, I get inspired about going to places that don’t have a guidebook. People do not have the ability to Google a weekend backpacking trail, and that’s enough to get me to check it out. The drive isn’t far from Lubbock, and who knows what you’ll find out there.
For those looking for a good tour of some of Palo Duro’s more famous attractions, check out the Lighthouse Trail and the Triassic Trail. As mentioned before, the boulder garden is a great place to boulder and there are some traditional climbing lines listed on its page at Mountain Project. If anyone knows any more hidden facts/trails/crags about the hidden giant in the desert, please comment and let us know.
