Reiley Peak is the highest peak of the Winchester Mountains in southeast Arizona, northwest of the city of Willcox and south of the giant Pinaleno Range and Mount Graham. The range is easily visible from Interstate-10 passing through Willcox – just look a bit to the northwest and there are the Winchesters and ol’ Reiley. The range is typical for this part of Arizona: compact with significant prominence, volcanic in origin (but not itself a volcano), cliffy and brushy – a classic sky island. Reiley seems to have a reputation attached to it: climbing it either involves a very long haul through brush, forest and cliff sections if one comes in from the east, or easier routes from the north that require one to manage a brutal set of forest roads just to get to the trailhead. Some access routes into the range have been closed when landowners closed easements across their land. The range sees a few hunters and a few hikers, but not in any high quantities.

Knowing this, I was eager to glom in with a group if one should convene for a hike up Reiley, and happily, the Southern Arizona Hiking Club was planning a hike to Reiley’s summit for this fine early March tuesday afternoon. My schedule this semester had no classes for Tuesdays, so with the day open, and a chance to climb Reiley, the opportunity was too good to pass up. I made plans to meet the group in east Tucson for the 100+-mile drive to the trailhead. To mitigate travel, I drove to Tucson the night before and crashed at Scott Casterlin’s place, then made the easy 15-mile drive to the meeting place. There would be four of us: Bob the leader/guide, Elena and Tom. We all piled into Bob’s vehicle and started the drive toward Willcox around quarter-to-six a.m.

The drive to Willcox covered a bit over an hour, then we exited and followed Fort Grant Road north and west out of Willcox through some rural areas of farms—some of them big corporate places. Eventually (20-something miles), Fort Grant Road meets with Ash Creek Road, which we followed more north and west through open state-land desert and ranch properties into the north foothills of the Winchesters. Ash Creek Road “ends” at a turn with Sunset Road and from here we continued west onto Coronado Forest lands, the same access road used for the Bassett Peak hike in the Galiuro Range (for Reiley, we make a left at an early junction). To this point we’d driven about 110 miles from Tucson and it was maybe 7:45 a.m. … so far so good. The last dozen or so miles to the Reiley hike “trailhead” was brutal! The old easement through private land was closed so an alternative route had to be bladed. These newer roads aren’t on any maps, and the roads are rough and rocky, plus we needed to watch our junctions carefully. Generally we stayed on FR-659. Bob had a series of waypoints on his GPS to help guide us. A couple sections of the road were very rocky and I got out a few times to spot Bob through the driving so he wouldn’t scrape his vehicle’s undercarriage. The scenery was actually very nice. The last three or four miles of the road were atop “The Mesas”, raised little plateaus of open rangeland and grass. We passed through a few gates, the last being the “only entrance and exit for the Broken Dipper Ranch”—this would be crucial on our exit, as things would turn out. Reiley Peak could be seen at times, and finally, finally, we came upon the road’s end at a cattle tank, a bit after 9 a.m. The drive had been tiring—and we had a whole hike still to do! The day was a mix of high clouds and sun, and a bit on the warm side, even at 5,700 feet elevation. I think we started hiking around 9:30 a.m.

From our starting point we could easily see Reiley Peak, which is a small saddle-shaped summit with the left (northeastern) summit seemingly higher, although the right (southwestern) point is actually the highest. One possible way to the top was to walk east along the fence line up an open grassy slope, then turn south and walk along a prominent north ridge to the top, but this way looked very brushy for the last half of the hike, so we decided against it. The other way is up an alternative ridge, slightly west-northwest of the main north ridge. We had a good view of this route and it looked promising, both visually and on the map. The downside was that we had to descend 200 feet into Brush Canyon below, then up again to get onto this ridge, aiming for the time being for the cattle tanks low on this ridge near a big juniper (see panorama photo at left). Cattle had bashed in some good paths both down and up this Brush Canyon. We separated a bit here at first but found one another again once on top the ridge.

From here it was just a matter of walking southeasterly along this ridge, up and down the various little sub-summits along the way, until we eventually would top out on Reiley itself. The first half at least appeared to be mostly open grass and spotty juniper and mountain oak, with very gentle slopes. We fell into a line and made steady progress through the open sections, sometimes going up and over the hills and sometimes side-hilling around these bumps via some cow paths. The cow trails helped considerably, forging a path through the grass, although the paths were often decorated with cow poop. In low points along the ridge were clearings where the cattle congregate and sleep. These clearings were devoid of grass completely—just bare dirt—and poop everywhere. Nevertheless, we made good time and found ourselves in another saddle just south of point 6,521 on the ridge. From here to the top would be much steeper with more substantial brush. We took plenty of breaks and were doing well as a team.

The next way-point along the ridge was point 7,105, and we found another good cow path that seemed to be up to normal trail standards; much of this little section of ascent went well, assisted greatly by this path. We surmounted point 7,105 then down its south side, dropping about 40 feet to a saddle below the next waypoint, point 7,245. This time we traversed below 7,245 to gain the small saddle to its west and below the summit of Reiley itself. The going here was again aided by a cow path—amazing they get even this high! We even passed through remnant snow patches, which was kind of a surprise given the recent warm weather we’d been having. The final push to the top was through grass and brush; no cow paths this time. Apparently the final 400 feet is a bit rough for them, even. We all made the top around 12:30, coming directly to the southern summit which is marked by a big cairn. The map is in error, ignoring a contour that should be here. The northern summits show on the map as 7,640 feet, and we were easily 15-20 feet higher where we were. We did not bother to hike to these northern points. We enjoyed the well-deserved break where we were. We all had a lunch, signed into the log, picked out nearby peaks and rested. The views were outstanding in all directions: we could see the Pinalenos (Graham), Galiuros (Bassett), Santa Theresas (Pinnacle & Turnbull), Rincons (Mica & Rincon Peak), Catalinas (Lemmon), Santa Ritas (Wrightson), Whetstones (Apache) and the Little Dragoons (Lime). Reiley was centrally located to all these peaks. It was very nice and we stayed here for about 45 minutes.

The hike down went well, generally following the same paths we took on the way up. The loose rock was the main annoyance. In one case one slipped right from under my foot and I fell into a batch of cactus, getting a whole bunch of spines in my had through my glove. Elena had a set of tweezers and helped me get the little spines out. Then just a few steps later Tom suffers a similar fate! Just part of hiking desert peaks, you know. We took a leisurely pace out, stopping for rests here and there. We had to descend into Brush Canyon again then re-climb the 200 feet to get back to the car, which wasn’t fun, but we all did it and we were back by roughly 4 p.m. After a brief rest to change into drier clothes, we got moving quickly, eager to get down through the rough forest road before it got dark. Given the time it took for us to get up this morning, this concern had some merit!

On the way out we took a wrong turn… and it all looks the same but Bob’s GPS waypoints helped confirm we were on the wrong path. We backed out and found the right path – the Broken Dipper Entry/Exit sign being our “proof” we were back on the right path. Otherwise we might still be there. The rocky bits went well and it was just another 90 minutes of slow, tedious 4-wheel driving to get back out onto smoother roads. At times the cattle would stand in the road, or run away from us – in the road, not realizing they should move to the left or right. Finally, back onto Ash Creek Road, we zipped back into Willcox for a celebratory dinner of Subway and Popeye Chicken sandwiches. It was dark by now, but we were happy the hike had gone well and so had the roads. Bob did a fine job of taking the nasty sections slow and carefully.

It was another hour or so back to Tucson where we all bid goodbye to one another. They were three really good partners and I enjoyed their camaraderie greatly! For me, though, I still had 110 miles more driving to go to get home, arriving about 10 p.m., dead tired. After a shower and some dinner and hugging and kissing my wife, I crashed, the end of a very long day, but ultimately, a successful one. The nicest part of all this? I never have to go back on those particular forest roads ever again!