Trip report
Jan 24, 2020 — Old Smokey Mountain is pretty far back along Kofa Queen Canyon Road. The road is rocky and slow which means good tires are a must, but only reasonably high clearance is required. Matt and I left the road and started along a wash heading south. The wash curved east slightly and then we took an animal trail east up to a low saddle. From the saddle, a half mile of side-hilling and slight ups and downs over drainage-riddled slopes dropped us into a wash that drains from Old Smokey Mountain. We could see a colorful unnamed peak on the left, and Old Smokey coming into view on the right. We followed this somewhat uninteresting wash south, only leaving it for short times to avoid the occasional encroaching brush, to the base of Old Smokey Mountain. I recommend not heading up the slope too early, despite how tempting it might be. There is a false summit that is seen from the base, but the true peak is farther south. We started to ascend the slope after we were sure we had avoided the false summit, and began heading to a gully that separates the false peak from the true peak. We took this gully to the saddle of the false/true summit. The going was slow and tedious, but never exceeded Class 2.
From the saddle, we continued south along the north ridge of Old Smokey Mountain, wrapping around to its east face, where interesting pinnacle-like boulders added some route finding to the summit. Without too much effort, we were at the base of the peak, which was about 30 feet above us. The scramble to get to the top required a short Class 3 move to gain an exposed, short, steep knife-edge. Falling to the left would mean death, so by reflex, I tended to lean to the right as I ascended this little ridge. Although the moves are Class 3, the exposure justifies calling the set of moves to the summit Class 4, plus the rock is more loose than I would have liked for being so exposed. The views north toward Summit Peak and Signal Peak were great, but the more impressive view was to the east toward Squaw Peak.
Despite the somewhat tedious approach, Old Smokey Mountain was a nice route that wrapped up a great few days in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.