Kofa Activites

We really enjoyed our almost two week stay off Palm Canyon Road in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Although the area has only one marked trail, there are many places to hikes. Here are the hikes we did:

Palm Canyon

This is a quick two mile hike to see a small grove of native Palm trees growing on the side of the mountain. The trail is at the end of Palm Canyon road.

Jaime, Kirk, Anya and I also hiked a couple of canyons to the right from the parking lot. This is open desert hiking with rough terrain and many nasty Cholla cacti to avoid. Still very interesting, but definitely wear long pants and hiking boots.

Kofa Queen Canyon Jeep Road and Skull Rock

A high clearance 4×4 road takes you into Kofa Queen Canyon from Palm Canyon Road. We did this separately as a hike and Jeep trip. You can park at the mouth of the canyon and walk a couple of miles back to see Skull Rock.

We also liked scrambling around the rock formations near Skull Rock.

Signal Peak

This hike/scramble/traverse takes you to the tallest point in the Refuge at 4,877 ft. Not really a trail but I followed GPS and rock pile markers to make it up a challenging 2,000 vertical feet climb in 1.5 miles.

Great 360 degree views of the Refuge and beyond.

I found a good write up and directions on this blog.

King Valley Road to Kofa Butte

This was a fun Jeep trip that had me smiling from ear to ear at least until I got a flat tire on my stock street tires. Beware! Rocks out here will eat up passenger tires. Form King Valley Road I took Junction 00 up past King of Arizona Mine and Junction 21 up to the end of the road.

I felt like I was in West World.

Castle Dome Ghost Town

This was a somewhat interesting ghost town and mine.

Not a bad place to visit for $10. More info on their website since I’m not quite sure how to describe it.

This dummy was sitting on the toilet, partially hidden and scared the crap out of Anya.

 

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