Pico De La Yerbabuena

On a mild and sunny December morning Reynaldo Perez (local rancher), his son Ricardo and myself took the canyon trail from Lomas de Picachos, hiked for 1hr and 15min to "the brige" where we sipped some cool and clean water from the mountain creek, hiked for another hour and 45min trough the well recovered pine forest to "the antenas" between the peaks and had lunch there, so far so good, we had come up to this point the month before; the peak looks so close from here, but there`s no trail to get to the rocky peak from this point so we had to find our way up hiking on the southwestern flank along and around a long rock wall and fighting against the thorny bushes, vines and agaves until we found a little vegetation strip going up towards the ridge and we started climbing the steep slope where a few oaks and pine trees dotted the landscape nicely. Once on the ridge it was a short scramble to the peak. What a view! Sombreretillo and the Gulf plains to the north and northeast, Sabinas and Sierra de la Iguana to the northwest beyond the Pico de Las Hayas, Monterrey to the south, the rest of the range to the southeast and east beyond Pico del Gallo, and below us the steep pinetree covered slopes and the yerbabuena canyon. We took some pictures and headed down the same way after 30 minutes. Once back at the ranch I still couldn`t belive that I had finally conquered the peak I always admired since I was a child.