Sun, Dec 11, 2022
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Etymology |
Story | Photos / Slideshow | Maps: 1 2 | GPX | Profiles: 1 2 |
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Day four in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge found me alone in the Kofa Mtns, friends having taken off the previous afternoon. The main objective today was Kofa Butte, but I would get five other summits on a rather full day. Peak 2,340ft proved to be the most challenging of the day and great fun.
end of the road in Yaqui Wash, either going up a
much brush
found there, but one can find 
class 3 options to bypass most
of it. Before getting to the end of the gully, one climbs out to the left
to find a short class 2-3 chute leading to the summit plateau. I
decided to check at the direct exit at 
the end of the gully. This was
a spicy 
class 4 effort for about 20ft up a chimney with poor rock
quality. The saving grace was that the chimney felt relatively safe and the
darker rock in 
the upper half is far more solid just when it's needed.
Once 
on the plateau, it's a longish walk to the south end of the butte
where the highpoint is located. I visited 
the lower NW summit first
before discovering 
the higher point to 
the SE.
A very busy register was placed by a Barbara Lilley party 
in 1982. She
came back two years later with another Sierra Club party that included Gordon
MacLeod and other notables. On 
the way back I took the
class 2-3 chute from the plateau to regain the
class 2-3 gully. In all I spent a
little over 3hrs covering the 3.5mi with about 1,600ft of gain.
from there. The first two summits were standard
class 2 desert fare. I went up 
the SE Ridge of Peak 2,487ft
to 
the summit, then along 
the connecting ridgeline to
Peak 2,620ft. Both summits were visited by Barbara/Gordon
in 1997. They left the register on the first summit, but Art Tauche had
left the one on Peak 2,620ft 
in 1990. I then dropped off
the north side of the second summit to make my way to the far more
impressive 
Peak 2,340ft.
I had gotten a good view of the south and east sides of Peak 2,340ft
while I was climbing Kofa Butte. It looked exceedingly hard. I chose to
do this 3 summit loop in the order I did so that I could approach Peak
2,340ft from 
the southwest and west to see if there were better options
there. Things looked difficult on that side as well. I climbed a class 2
slope to a saddle between the main peak and a detached pinnacle to the
west. On 
the other side, I found 
a class 2-3 gully that nicely
led south and 
east up to what I thought was 
the summit, the
point identified on LoJ as the highpoint. It turned out to be a lower west
summit with a very deep, 
vertical gap separating it from the higher
east summit. Where I'd thought I'd discovered the key to the summit, I was left
dejected. I descended 
a steep chute to the north, adjacent to the
lower west summit. This led me around 
the north side of the
peak where I found steep faces and narrow gullies that looked to go vertical
near their top. It's possible one of these might work as a scramble route, but
it looked too dicey for my taste from below. I continued around the north and
northeast sides, eventually finding 
the northeast side has steep but
more reasonable facets with some potential. I climbed up class 2 slopes about
halfway up before things got harder. I left my poles and entered a class 4
chimney/gully with decently solid rock to chimney my 
way up it. This
was followed by ledges and short faces, none harder than solid class 3, leading
all the way to 
the summit. I was elated to find a way up this one, and
excited to find a register with only a single entry - 
from 2001. A very
fine summit, this one. I reversed the route 
back down to
the poles, then continued traversing around the east side (finding a
cool arch) and 
down a chute to 
the desert flats
below on 
the SE side. It was 3p by the time I 
got back to the
Jeep and I half expected it to be the end of the day. I still had an hour of
driving to get back out of King Valley and back to the highway.
from the roadway, I decided
to pay it a visit. The summit is found in Purcell's Rambles & Scrambles,
so it had been on my radar. Purcell describes a route around
the back side from 
the saddle east of the summit, and it was
to this I initially headed. As I got close to the saddle, my attention turned to
the South Face and I suspected I could find a scramble route up that
side. There is a wide, sloping ledge about halfway up with some airy class 3 to
reach it. After managing this little problem, an easy walk to the left end of
the ledge leads to some easy class 3 and 
the exit onto the
very summit, taking all of 20min.
I did not find the register Purcell had described finding. I looked for
other routes off the north and west sides, but all looked too cliffy
- might require a few more beers to find a scramble route there.
I ended up descending Purcell's route back to the east side saddle and
then 
back to the Jeep.
from the road. It
was 5:00p when I set out, only half an hour until sunset. This one makes for a
better scramble than Yellowfin because it has decent rock almost the whole way
up, as opposed to the 3-4min's worth on Yellowfin. With overcast skies from a
weakening storm passing across the state, the sun managed to 
come out
very briefly before disappearing for good, leaving me with a late-afternoon view
to the south, and 
east into King Valley. It took about 25min to reach
the summit where I found a busy register left by Gordon and Barbara
in 1994. Too many pages to photograph and I needed to get down while
I still could see well enough on the class 3 terrain. It was
5:25p when I 
finished up, only minutes to sunset (though that was moot
since it had disappeared behind clouds long ago). A pretty full day...
Continued...
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