By Balan Selvamuthukumaran ’27
Last weekend, I had the chance to go backpacking in Arizona with a few friends, our aim being the Kofa Wilderness Preserve. We headed off for Kofa nice and early on Saturday morning, did our out-and-back trip, and were back by 4:30pm on Sunday.
How was this possible? Well, as I say in the title, Arizona really isn’t as far as you might think. Being in California, I’m used to having to drive hours and hours to get to somewhere that might be a good hiking spot. Trips to Yosemite and Sequoia took over five hours each, and even shorter trips to the Sespe Wilderness or Joshua Tree were always longer than I expected. Not Arizona, though. If you’re not driving all the way to Phoenix or Tucson (and even that isn’t too far), you can make it to Arizona in three hours flat, as we did.
I had never been to Arizona—I mean, never really thought about it either, being from the East Coast—so there’s another awesome thing I got out of coming to Pomona, a trip to some gorgeous desert mountains in AZ. This was a pretty quick trip, but we still spent a good five to six hours backpacking through the wash and cacti of Kofa on Saturday. After successfully penetrating the fields of cacti and climbing what seemed to be a near-vertical slope, we finally made it to our camping spot—a beautiful cave just five hundred feet from Signal Peak, our eventual goal.
We had the chance to see an absolutely gorgeous sunset up on Signal Peak, had a nice fire in the night along with our food (in my case, a loaf of cracked sourdough and cream cheese along with trail mix), and went to sleep at the glorious hour of 9 pm. It really doesn’t get better than camping in the desert.
The next morning, we were up early to eat breakfast (the same thing as dinner) and pack up our site (leave no trace!) before climbing back down the mountain and going through the wash to where we had left the car. We made great time back, fueled by the drive to make it back to campus and do the work we had been neglecting all weekend up to that point. Short and sweet trip—Arizona rocks.