The area has numerous concrete dams, windmills, wells, and water tanks, some built for previous mining and ranching. Some have deteriorated; others are maintained by the refuge staff for wildlife water needs. This management use explains proliferation of roads.

Fall 2019 provided good rains in Arizona so we decided to try a Kofa backpack in January 2020. The Fish and Wildlife Services biologist agreed we’d find enough water in springs and canyon potholes. Most of our loop would be in the western and northern parts of this wilderness—which turned out to be more popular than the areas we visited in 2018.

The 2020 trip started on Palm Canyon Road, popular for informal “snowbird” camps. We left our vehicle at a pullout and scrambled north, crossing washes and rocky desert for 2.5 miles to Kofa Queen Road. On this route along a wide wash into the mountains, we met many day-use jeeps. We dropped our packs at Ten Ewes Canyon where a good route marked with stone markers (cairns) climbs to Signal Peak, highest in the wilderness at 4877-feet elevation.

Our day trip to Signal was unsuccessful; we had started too late in the day and had to turn around halfway. We camped in a nice flat across from the “trailhead.” A vehicle woke us the next morning: early morning peak-baggers parked across from camp.

We hiked road to the old Kofa Queen mine site and a welcome road closure. We had solitude all day on a closed jeep route to a small pass, a brief descent to a wash and then a sheep trail to Squaw Tank: beautiful pools among rocks. A slog down a wash brought us to the Wilbanks Cabin and windmill (we did not find an open tank), then to Wilbanks Road over Bighorn Pass to camp near some potholes where we also had found water in 2018. At sunset, a pickup clambered up the wash, parked awhile, went on up the road and returned after dark.

Sharing Wilderness with Jeeps and UTVs

After our cross-country trek to Burro Creek, we were on High Tanks Trail and boundary roads and saw many vehicles. The next day we got water at lovely Red Tank pools and hiked a lesser-used road where we saw 3 vehicles total, including a bow hunters’ jeep parked near fenced but dry Jasper Spring (FWS warned this spring might be dry).

We soon turned off on a closed road that looped back to Wilbanks Road with no vehicles nor tracks. Back on Wilbanks Road near Owl Head formation, a fleet of UTVs raced down the Alamo Wash past us. We camped near Wilkinson Seep, which had water but was not filled to brim as in 2018. Potholes a little further up the wash actually offered better water.

The next morning, we saw only one vehicle, a hunter in a pickup truck on Wilbanks Road. We saw no one else once we turned off into the wash we came in on. However, on the far side of the low pass into Kofa Queen, the closed road had been illegally “reopened” by a jeep group; they had forged a route past the closed gate up an old jeep track and added rocks and logs to aid vehicles in washed out areas.

Some factors aided our solitude on the earlier 2018 trip. Wilbanks Road, a cherry-stem road going north-south through the heart of the wilderness (built by a ranch family in the 1930s) is usually open to motorized vehicles. However, heavy fall rains had created a washout on the south end in 2018 so vehicles could not drive through. In 2020, Wilbanks Road was open; we saw evening hunters and encountered UTVs rushing down Alamo Wash, which the road follows for several miles.

Also we had done our 2018 overnights on the eastern and southern ends of the wilderness much further from the Quartzite area (where hundreds of thousands of migrant “snowbirds” from colder northern states reside in the winter in mobile-home housing tracts or Long-Term Visitor Areas [LTVAs] on public land). A restricted military area in the southeast also prevents through traffic. Our 2020 backpack loop used boundary roads on the northwest much closer to Quartzite.

The Next Wet Year Visit?

If we came back, we’d check with FWS on which tanks might have water after a wet year, such as the many tanks in the remote Castle Dome Mountains shown on the refuge map and plan a cross-country trip hiking between them.

Although we had followed their trails, we did not see any desert bighorn sheep on either of our visits to this wilderness devoted to their habitat. Either they are widely dispersed because of abundant water, or they don’t like vehicles either. In late fall 2019, friends of ours hiked beyond the one-mile trail into Palm Canyon and heard loud clashing from bighorn rams fighting at the head of the canyon.

The Kofa would be relatively easy to manage for backpacking. Old mining routes and sheep trails over passes could be marked with cairns and a few loops created. Viable tanks (some improved, some natural) could be marked on a map for reliable water after favorable weather conditions. And the big tanks maintained by FWS for wildlife could include a spigot for hikers. We also suggest closing most of Wilbanks Road and other cherry-stemmed roads to public vehicle use, allowing administrative use only. With increasing numbers of winter “snowbirds” residing temporarily in the area, UTV and jeep use may soon overwhelm this remote desert refuge and the wildlife it is supposed to protect.

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