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Final Days in Kofa
We’d talked with Frank about McPherson Pass, a new area for us to explore. It was a slow drive - the majority of roads out here are slow going - and we arrived at McPherson Wash late in the morning.
McPherson Tank was up there somewhere and we were determined to find it. The wash narrowed into a canyon after a mile of hiking.
The left side above shows a thick bed of fanglomerate, the first fanglomerate we’d encountered in Kofa. The battle began as we climbed higher into the canyon - climbing and fighting our way up a canyon choked with vegetation.
We reached the gorge and the last climbs up to the dam.
The final climb was the longest and most difficult. The route is to the right of the above photo. We climbed to the top of the ridge above the dam, climbed down into the canyon above the dam, and then down canyon to the dam itself. Dam.
As you can see, this dam is completely filled in and now a waterfall.
The Lady climbed up the opposite ridge as we were looking for an easier alternate route back to the truck. She looked back and took a rare photo of me with her phone.
The right side of the above photo gives you an idea of what we climbed to get above the dam.
The route back lacked the fun of climbing but worked well and is the recommended route to take if you’d like to visit McPherson Tank.
We intersected an old trail.
We passed by two stacked stone monuments on a ridge.
We believe these are ancient and were stacked to look like hunters in an effort to move big game animals in a desired direction.
We finished our hike through a forest of Teddy Bear Cholla. We watched where we stepped as we did not want to pick up any hitch hikers on our boots, as the Lady calls them.
We set up camp in a dispersed site below McPherson Pass and then walked up to the highpoint.
We circled around camp and climbed a highpoint to the northwest. Here’s a view back at camp.
We stopped and photographed a well protected yellow saguaro.
We sat still for a short time back at camp and snacked on fresh popped popcorn. Re-energized, we struck out to the southeast. With all this around us to explore, how could we stay still?
A new brand of Cholla and a new belly flower for the Lady - Purplemat.
We circled back to camp for dinner and evening chores.
Evening light was subdued but this was another fine, cozy, quiet camp.
We drove out to highway 95 the next morning and made a stop to fill up with gas in Quartzsite. We drove into the intersection with the MST&T Road and High Tanks Road and then continued east on the High Tanks Road. This area is busier as it is close to Quartzsite, and High Tanks Road makes a popular loop drive. But High Tanks Road is rough, narrow, and slow. If you are not comfortable with lots and lots of pin stripping, stay away from Kofa. If you’d like a taste of what Kofa’s backcountry roads are like, drive this loop from south to north to the Beehive. We stayed a night out here earlier in our trip and we had more hiking and exploring we wished to do. Now we were back.
The road passes along the base of the mountains. We made a stop at the aptly named Brass Cap Point. Here’s piece of the Livingston Hills, AZ USGS 7.5’ topographic map.
Allow me to do a short lesson here on USGS 7.5 topos. I love this stuff and the Lady and I taught land navigation courses for over 30 years. Brass Cap Point is easy to find on the map, I put it in the center. USGS woodland copy topo maps use five colors - blue represents water features. Green is vegetation. Brown are the contour lines that show the ups and downs in the world. Black is man-made items. These would be roads, trails, and such, and even the names we give things - example, “Brass Cap Point” is in black as is the road running west and east, the road we were driving. The fifth color is red and red are land survey lines. Look at the map. You see squares with numbers in the center of the squares. This is the land survey system invented by Thomas Jefferson - The Public Land Survey System (PLSS). These squares are sections and each section is one square mile. The number is the section name so here we are looking at Section 11, Section 12, Section 13, and Section 14. A township contains 36 Sections and is 6 miles by 6 miles in size (6x6=36). Look at the red lines that define the sections. Note that where they intersect is a small (and a bit darker) cross. When there's a small cross at the corners on the topo map, there is a monumented Section Corner on the ground precisely at that spot.
Here’s the “brass cap” that gave Brass Cap Point its name. This section corner was surveyed and placed here in 1916. I get excited about this, forgive me. In the center of the cap shows the “corner” between sections 11, 12, 13, and 14 just like on the topo map. Each township has a name and it is just above the corner designation on the brass cap - T1N R18W. This township is in the first row of townships north of the Baseline and in the 18th column of townships west of the Meridian. The Baseline runs east and west from the Initial Point and the Meridian runs north and south from the Initial Point. And the Initial Point for all of Arizona is the Gila and Salt River Meridian.The complete name (not often used except on legal documents) for this township is T1N R18W Gila and Salt River Meridian and Baseline. Do you know the starting point for land survey in your area? Here in northern California and all of Nevada the Initial Point is the south summit of Mount Diablo southeast of San Francisco.
This is the basics of the PLSS and those red lines on the topo map. In a simple sense, the red squares give you a reference to quickly estimate distance on the map. A section is one square mile. Those little red crosses that designate a monumented section corner, we’ve used them for years as an exercise to navigate to and find, and did so (with a map and handheld compass) long before GPS units were invented. Navigate cross country and find something the size of this brass cap, you can pat yourself on the back.
The lesson is over. I hope you found it of value. If you want to make an old timer happy - especially someone that spent a lot of time in the field working for one of our land management agencies - ask them what a chain is. And to give you a “legal” for their location.
With the sun lowering in the west, we chose a site higher than planned that was still in the sun. On our afternoon walk saguaro, again, took center stage.
We were delighted that no one else was in the area. We were alone to walk quietly hand in hand and take in all this goodness that surrounded us.
Day turned to night.
The weather was changing the next morning. High clouds added a glare to the sky. What was in store for us the next several days? We had returned here to explore up Tunnel Springs Canyon.
We took note of all the marvelous possible shelter sites. This place is on our list to return to.
We came upon a puzzle. What were Mojave Poppies doing in the Sonoran Desert? Spoiler - the link says they belong here.
This box canyon really caught our eye with the high dry fall and the cave below.
Ascending this canyon was not difficult but it was tedious and slow going. We didn’t reach our planned objective. We kept getting sidetracked. An example is coming upon Eastern Mojave Buckwheat.
It must have followed the poppies in. We made our way back to camp.
Coming in High Tanks Road, one of our anchor points to hold the camper in place broke. We drove out in the morning and did a tour of the two hardware stores in Quartzsite. We had success at the second and finished a suitable repair in the parking lot. After so many weeks, it was time to think about returning to our house.
Our adventure continues in the final upcoming Part Eight.
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