Hike Kino Peak Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ

Mar 22, 2022 — Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is home to some pretty unique and interesting desert peaks, Kino Peak being one. Every time I come to the area to tick an objective off my list, more get added. Kino Peak is known for its somewhat complex, interesting summit route, and notorious for the array of tattered clothes and water bottles strewn along the approach, discarded by immigrants crossing the border. We took the standard route for Kino Peak, which starts from Bates Well Ranch, accessible by any vehicle. This historic site comprised of a few small buildings and old windmills seems to be visited pretty regularly by ATVers and folks interested in desert mining history, but we only took a little peek inside the cabin before starting out to Kino Peak.

The goal is to reach a lightly traveled trail that leads to a dirt road, but to get there some desert walking is first required. There is no one "best" route from Bates Well Ranch, except to head generally south until locating this trail. A quarter mile or so and we entered a sandy wash that drains southwest. We noted a cairn on the opposite bank of the wash and located a social trail which continued south. The trail is a nice little feature, but it's a bit difficult to follow at times. The desert landscape here is surprisingly not all that vegetated and even if you miss the trail the hiking shouldn't be unpleasant. We soon reached a dirt road (I traced it back on a satellite map and it seemed to just lead in a roundabout way into the wash we had just left). This dirt road is long and boring, and Kino Peak only slowly comes into view. The road eventually turns into a social trail that continues south.

Roughly three miles later, we reached a minor saddle on the east side of Kino Peak, the spot we'd leave the trail and start ascending. The initial slope is Class 2, leading to the base of a rock outcropping. We kept to the right here, wrapping just below the cliff base of the outcropping and then reemerging on its west side. A social trail becomes more apparent here, winding around more rock outcroppings as it slowly ascends to the east ridge of Kino Peak. We encountered some Class 2+ along this section.

Sooner than anticipated, we found ourselves staring at the impressive east face of Kino Peak from the top of a narrow perch. From here the ascent to the peak looks pretty precipitous, but we'd soon learn getting to its summit ridge wouldn't be as dangerous as it looks. Kino Peak was separated from us by a gap, but a small landbridge would link us to the base of the peak. To reach this landbridge, we dropped from our perch to the left and into a loose gully, which leads away from the peak for a short time. Getting into the gully required a Class 3 downclimb, the crux of the hike. A loose 100-ish feet of descent down this gully led to a ledge that we could use to wrap around the base of the ridge/perch we had just descended from, where Kino came back into view. A short Class 3 move got us up to the landbridge.

From the landbridge, we started north on Class 2 terrain, cairns marking the route for the most part. A really wide ledge brought us safely to the north side of Kino Peak's north ridge. It's surprisingly straightforward since both up and down are cliffs, but this ledge was a miraculous feature that kept the going relatively safe and unexposed. A Class 2 gully led above the higher cliffs and up to the ridgeline, where easy hiking led to the summit block.