Hike Black Tank Benchmark and Clifty Benchmark Loop Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, AZ

Jan 21, 2020 — With so little information available about Clifty Benchmark, Matt and I set out analyzing a topo map to try to find an interesting route to its summit. Coming from the east seemed viable, but the road out there could take forever, or maybe not even be passable. Plus, we wanted more of an adventure in Kofa than just walking up a slope to the peak, and the loop we came up with definitely was quite a bit of a route-finding challenge on difficult terrain. It ended up being really nice overall. On this route, we ended up bagging Black Tank Benchmark, Peak 3050, and Clifty Benchmark.

That being said, reaching Black Tank Benchmark is likely much easier if approaching from the canyon directly to its west rather than the fun, but silly, route we ended up taking. If you want to access the peak more easily and less fun, that would be the way to try instead.

We parked at the end of a dirt road leading to a feature called Black Tank, stopping at the wilderness boundary. We continued along the old dirt road into a narrowing drainage, where we decided to take the left fork since the right fork looked like a sheer cliff. This fork required a bit of Class 2 boulder-hopping and slowly became more narrow, eventually leading to a dryfall. Convinced at first that we were cliffed-out, we almost called it a day and went back, but we noticed a potential scramble route to the left of the fall. It went at Class 4, only one or two committing moves required to get to higher ground. We were pretty excited at this point, convinced we'd make it up to Black Tank Benchmark. Once at the top of our scramble, we noted we were a bit high above the fall and located a Class 2 weakness on the right that allowed us to escape the cliffs and get into the wash that led to the dryfall we had avoided. We followed this wash up a steep slope filled with boulders and up to what appeared to be another impassable section. Looking to the right, a brushy gully would have led us generally south, but we didn't know what was at the top of that gully - it looked rough on a topo. Instead, we located a crack in the wall to the right that led diagonally along a ramp to higher ground. A difficult move got us onto this ramp, but after that we ascended on Class 2 terrain to significantly easier ground. We followed a series of washes and ridges, generally heading east, until Black Tank Benchmark was well in our sight. We continued on its west slopes to a short Class 2 section just below the summit. The views from Black Tank Benchmark toward Clifty Benchmark were incredible, and the summit register only had only a small handful of entries.

From the summit of Black Tank Benchmark, we noted a ridge leading to the intimidating-looking Clifty Benchmark. We started south, then continued southeast along the rocky ridge, which included an avoidable knife-edge, and we could avoid all cliffy sections by keeping to the right (south), to our relief. The landscape was definitely daunting before starting out along the ridge. We avoided a small, sketchy-looking peak with minimal prominence and continued up Class 2 terrain to Peak 3050, where we got close-up views of Clifty Benchmark and were convinced there was no way we could get the peak from the west.

From Peak 3050, w set out along the south slopes of Clifty Benchmark in search of a weakness, which we found on the south side. A steep gully full of loose rock and brush led north to just right of the summit, where we took in the views to the north a Class 3 section that would take us to Clifty. A few nice moves led straight up the face, and at about halfway up, we worked left on a slightly exposed Class 3 ledge. Alternatively, continuing straight up the face would require a Class 4 move. Once above the crux, we followed the Class 2 ridge to the summit of Clifty Benchmark.

After the summit, we returned to the base of Clifty and then crossed our fingers we could find a route down, rather than backtracking all that way. We made one error which landed us to a severe dryfall, resulting in having to re-ascend. I removed this bit from the attached map.

Our descent route ended up working as Class 2+, and would also work well to ascend Clifty from the west without including the Black Tank Benchmark section of the loop. I short, we followed an obvious drainage from the southern base of Clifty, generally heading southwest, then ascended to a saddle to the west. From the saddle, we worked down a rocky drainage with minimal brushiness safely to the desert floor. We then navigated the desert, trying to be as efficient as possible to get back to the car.