The Dragoon Mountains are located in southeast Arizona in Cochise County, about 75 miles east of Tucson. The Dragoons are notable for the remarkable natural rock formations featuring innumerable pillars, voids, mazes, cliff faces and shapes too varied to describe. These rock formations are tucked into a prominent side canyon on the east side of the range and are collectively known as the Cochise Stronghold. Higher up, the range has a smoother profile, with its summit, Mount Glenn, being a simple bump along an elongated ridge, with other seemingly gentle ridges leading up to it. The summit is rarely climbed for a number of reasons, while most people who come this way will (rightly) want to check out the Stronghold. The great Chiricahua Apache Chief Cochise and his men, including his successor Geronimo, would seek refuge in these mazes of rock, eluding the United States Military for the nearly 20 years that the Apache guerrilla wars were fought, roughly 1865-1885. Cochise himself, who died in 1874, is said to be buried in the Stronghold. His burial place has never been found and probably never will be.

I visited the Stronghold in 2007 and camped at the campground run by the Coronado National Forest. I made some short hikes but nothing too extensive, but I did scout some of the approaches for the summit at that time. For this trip, the summit would be the goal, featuring a notoriously dense bushwhack on its upper-most ridges. My partner was Chris Gilsdorf, whom I “knew” through the County Highpointers group and from Summitpost. He recently moved to Arizona and was interested in seeking out some summits. With the summer heat finally gone and nicer, cooler weather settling in, we chose this weekend to make a one-day assault on the peak, from Chandler and back. No trails lead to the summit and although the ridges are mostly gentle and easy to follow, they are rocky, brushy, and full of agave, sotol, small cacti and other pointy plants. There are also a couple of cliff bands and rock outcrops to dodge, and then, of course, there is the hopelessly dense brush up high. We knew we were in for some work, but felt pretty confident we wouldn’t have too much trouble.

I picked Chris up in Chandler at 4 a.m. and we made the 190-mile drive to the Stronghold area, arriving shortly after 7 a.m. The weather was cloudy at first, then we hit patches of rain and drizzle after Tucson, pretty much for most of the remaining mileage along Interstate-10. We stopped for supplies at “The Thing?” gas station-gift shop, then backtracked, taking exit 318 through the town of Dragoon, following backroads toward the Stronghold. We followed Forest Road 795 north toward Blacktail Hill, then a rougher old miner’s track toward a stock tank, where we parked, pretty much following the default approach and route. It stayed drizzly and cool, with cloud cover obscuring the mountains above us. This would be the theme for the day, and admittedly, I was disappointed given that we expected better weather and usually, this is a dry time of year with optimal conditions. Of course, I feared we may be in for some real storms and have to retreat off the peak altogether. Nevertheless, we went for it, starting up the remainder of the miner’s road at 7:45 a.m.

We walked the track for about a third of a mile to where it bent left, noting an old abandoned truck “parked” on this road a few switchbacks above us, its cab smashed in. We decided to check it out on our return. Instead, we left the road at the first bend and started up a ridge aiming generally southwest that would connect us to the main east-west ridge, marked by a spot elevation of 6,241 for one of its many ridge bumps. Partway up this lower ridge we came upon an open, unguarded mine shaft and peeked in, a drop of a good 30 feet before the hole bent, and who knows how far down it went overall. Interesting, but also reminding us of the need to be careful—we could very well bash through some brush and drop right into one of these shafts before we knew what happened! In any case, we slowly trudged upward through ever-thickening brush and small trees (juniper, fir, madrone, probably mountain oak too), arriving onto the main ridge shortly before 9 a.m., where we took a break. The weather was still drizzly and misty, and the fog would occasionally roll into these canyons and up the ridges, intermittently giving us some real unique views, or none at all. Looking to the west we could see our next main bump, then not much after that. At times we had nearly complete white-out conditions with as little as 50 feet of visibility.

On the main ridge now, we started up the slopes heading slightly west-northwest, aiming for a hill with (intrapolated) spot elevation 6,720 feet, at which point we’d make a turn to our left and start up the southwest-trending ridges. This part went well and there seemed to be a path for most of the way up, although we still had to work our way around some brush and obstacles. We took a break at this hillock and peered southerly toward the summit. The clouds lifted just enough to show the top, and the up-and-down nature of the ridge we needed to get there. Below us in the immediate saddle connecting to marked ridgepoint 6,841 there was a band of rock forming a wall. We descended to this gendarme and scooted up the easy few feet to some natural notches but were dismayed to see a larger drop on the other side. These drops were maybe only 8-10 feet but the holds were marginal and in this wet weather, we decided to not test them at all. We ended up descending about 20 feet down the east slope and worm our way around the rocks entirely. From here it was an easy ascent to gain point 6,841. By now the summit was invisible as the clouds had descended again.

From point 6,841 we dropped about 80 feet to a broad saddle, then continued our way up the slopes, gentle at first, then steepening somewhat dramatically to a point, where the terrain leveled for one last time. To here the going had been pretty good, terrain and weather considered. We were at about 7,100 feet elevation and maybe three-tenths of a mile from the top. Now the real work began. The trees close in quickly at the last soft saddle, and from here to the top is some of the roughest bushwhacking I’ve ever encountered in the state. There often is no good way through the trees other than to plow directly through the branches, ducking and squirming as needed. Occasionally we’d find a “path” that went for maybe 15 feet, but then we’d be right back at the branches. Chris had entered the summit’s position as a waypoint in his GPS, and every few minutes he’d read off our remaining horizontal and vertical distance. Even when we were just 100 feet from the top we could see nothing and had no sense of where we were. We encountered a substantial cliff band at about 7,350 feet elevation. Chris went up the 15-20 feet directly while I found a brushy alternative to the right that only required one 4-foot scramble, albeit with tons of branches. Finally, the top seemed to materialize through the fog, the treetops appearing as slightly-darker shades of gray. We found the summit rocks and benchmark soon enough, set in a tiny clearing. With the fog, we had no views whatsoever. It was about noon when we arrived, with the last 400 feet through the trees probably taking an hour alone. While happy to be at the top, we both decided to just get moving. After a few photos, we did just that. We were both soaked through and uncomfortable. By inspection, a small hump of rocks a bit to the northwest seemed about as high as our position.

We immediately encountered trouble on the descent. The final ridge approach had come to the summit on a southwest bearing, while the summit ridge itself is set at a southeast-northwest alignment. We tried to retrace our steps to stay on our correct bearing but soon—within minutes—realized we were off route. We had covered about 200 horizontal feet and maybe a drop of 20 feet, and had actually traveled northwesterly along the summit ridge itself. Chris’ GPS had out ascent track but he had no other waypoints entered, so I got out my compass and noted our incorrect bearing. We backtracked almost back to the summit itself before (a) Chris reported our descent track now overlapping our ascent track and (b) me finding some boot prints of ours. Quickly we came upon the cliff band and we knew we were back on track … for now at least. Even in those 10 minutes or so of being off track, the sick feeling of being truly lost, especially in these conditions, was rather upsetting. I’ve already had one bad lost experience, I don’t want another one.

The ugly descent through the thick trees went faster since we had gravity on our side, but it was still a great relief to be out of those trees and back onto more open ridges. We descended down slope then back up to point 6,841, then started down its opposite side, and again, got this sense of something not being quite right. We were expecting to come upon the rock wall fairly quickly but when we did not, out came the compass again and sure enough, we were off by about 90 degrees, traveling east when we should be going north! In clear conditions we could have easily used the ridges as a visual guide but we couldn’t see 50 feet in front of us, much less 300 feet across a canyon. We worked our way north and slowly the rock wall materialized out of the fog and we felt happy (and relieved) again. We took a longer break at the saddle below the rock wall. I was amazed how easily we got off track on this part, and was grateful I had my compass along today!

We re-ascended to the top of the unnamed 6,720-foot hill, then went hard right, now on an easterly bearing, continuing down the ridge. This went well, and as we descended we finally dropped below the cloud line, where we could at last see some of the terrain. I had grown very tired of the white-out we had up high. We dropped to about the 6,000-foot level then decided to cut directly down the north-facing slopes, trying to catch the old mine road on the way down. This part went okay. Brushy, but more open (albeit more rocky). After dropping about 500 feet we came upon the road and followed it down to the abandoned, smashed-in truck we’d seen earlier this morning. We both kind of figured there may be a body in with the wreckage. Well, no body to be found which was good, but the truck was really beat up pretty bad, and mostly stripped. It looked to have been abandoned there within the last year or two – it begs the question how often people come up this high. Surmising this may have been a stolen truck and abandoned up here and left to rot, I sent in a tip to the sheriff afterward, doing my civic duty. The final hike back to my truck went well, arriving back at 4:30 p.m., a total time out of 8 hours, 45 minutes. I was very happy to be able to strip out of my went, soaked clothing and into some dry clothes… that was the best part of the hike, I’d say. Or the mini-burgers I had at Jack in the Box in Benson. We drove back into Chandler, arriving about 8 p.m.

I enjoyed the hike and was pleased to be successful despite the conditions. In drier, clearer conditions I imagine our time may have been cut down by an hour or two. In any case, I would strongly advise the use of a map and compass, and a GPS with waypoints, especially for the final bushwhack to the top. Chris was a great partner for the hike and was able to knock out one of the tougher bushwhacks in the state on his first try!