Such a strange word – “copperosity”. I looked on-line and came up with this obscure defintion. “Copperosity” seems to have been in most active use during the mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th.  The word seems to have been used in the context of physical health, as in, “Eat your green beans; they’re good for your copperosity” or “How’s your copperosity sagaciating, this morning?” So that enlightened me a little, but I still think it’s one of the odder words used in the Arizona mountain vocablulary.

The Copperosity Hills sit entirely within the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation in southern Arizona. They describe an arc spanning a mere six miles in length, and sit west of the Kohatk Valley, east of the Kaka Valley and north of the Cimmaron Mountains. Perhaps the hills were given their name by prospectors working copper showings in the area back in the 1880s during Arizona’s heyday of mining exploration.

I had never heard of them until one winter’s day back in 2001, my climbing buddy from Los Angeles, Dave Jurasevich called and said we should go pay them a visit. We met up by an obscure exit along the interstate and convoyed down to the area. By the time we got there, it was late in the day. Camping by the ruins of the abandoned settlement of Totopitk, we spent one long, cold night. The sun was welcomed the next morning as it warmed our bones.

Dave’s idea of striking southeast across the desert was a good one, and before long we stood on the summit of Cathedral Rock, the highest point in the hills. It’s a spectacular spot, with one of the more vertical drops to be found anywhere.

We built a cairn and left a register, not finding any sign of previous climbers. Not lingering long, we headed back by a different route and re-gained our vehicles, then moved on out of the area. So ended my first exposure to the Copperosity Hills.

Several years later, in 2003, I was back in the area. It was a fine June morning, but because that is our hottest month I had driven out very early to beat the heat. At first light, I was parked on the west side of Peak 2346, getting ready to climb, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a marked vehicle of the Tohono O’odham Police. He was as shocked to see me as I was him. We got out of our vehicles and he said to me “What do you think you’re doing here?” “Climbing”, I replied with a big shit-eating grin. “Do you have permission to be here?” he then asked. “As a matter of fact, I do”, I told him. I said that if he would allow me to get it, I’d go to my glove-box and produce my permit. He let me, and soon he was reading it, and I’ve gotta tell you that he was pretty surprised. He told me that he’d never seen one of those before. He asked me if I had been climbing in the area before, and I told him yup, plenty of times. “Be careful, you could run into a lot of bad people around here”, he advised. I promised I’d keep a sharp eye out, and he took off. The TO police don’t often patrol these remote areas, mostly leaving that to the Border Patrol, so I was pretty surprised to have run into him at all.

Once he left, I quickly dispatched Peak 2346 by its south slopes.

The rest of my day was spent climbing peaks in the west end of the Vekol Mountains, so I had no more to do with the Copperosity Hills for a while.

Some time later, on July 7, 2003 to be exact, I had an interesting experience at the other end, the far west end, of the hills. I had just finished climbing Copper Benchmark one fine morning, and was driving back south along the dirt road towards the village of Ventana. Up ahead, something caught my eye. It was a group of seven men on bicycles, riding north, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Except it wasn’t. All they had with them, aside from the clothes on their backs, was a water jug each slung over their handlebars. Now I’ve seen a lot of undocumented folks crossing into the U.S., but this took the cake. How obvious could you get? I pulled off the road to let them by, and none of them so much as made eye contact with me. A short while later, I used my cell phone to call the Border Patrol from another summit. I told them of the incident and that they should be able to find the men once they hit the gas pipeline road about six miles farther north.

I help the Border Patrol because they have always helped me. One month later, I happened to be driving along that part of the pipeline road. Lined up neatly along the south shoulder, I found seven bicycles, all of which had been disabled by having had a vehicle run over them. It turns out that the Border Patrol had found those guys all right, just where I said they would. I mean, for the love of Pete, if you’re gonna sneak into the country, at least try to be a bit less obvious.

And now, for the rest of the story. Still having unfinished business, I returned to the Copperosity Hills a month later. Parking at the same spot I used for Peak 2346, I started west on foot just after sunrise. It was a magical morning as I headed for my first objective, Peak 2732. In actual fact, there were two summits I wanted that morning, the second being Peak 2860. Here is a photo of the two of them as seen from farther north that same morning. On the left is the sharply-pointed 2732, with the clearly-higher 2860 to its right, and Cathedral Rock in the far right distance.

Peak 2732 was steep but not otherwise difficult. I left a cairn and register, then started down its west ridge. In a prominent saddle about 150′ below the summit, I heard a noise. It seems I had frightened a black vulture at its roost. It obliged me with one picture before launching itself into the abyss.

From the 2732-2860 saddle, it was a near-500-foot climb up more steep ground to reach the top of Peak 2860.

That summit afforded me a good view past Cathedral Rock and over to Copper Benchmark, a scant 4.5 miles distant. In this photo, Copper’s summit just breaks the skyline to the left of Cathedral.

Here is a view looking back to Peak 2732 on the right and out to Peak 2346, on the left, out on the desert floor.

Well, my peaks were climbed and my work was done, so down I went, back to my truck. As I left the Copperosities, heading southeast, I soon arrived at the village of Chiapuk, or what was left of it. Once upon a time, a few families had lived there, but all was now quiet, the desert reclaiming all traces of the place. The graveyard was still there, and I could see that it had been visited on All Souls Day, plastic flowers adorning several of the graves. One bore a headstone; the others were marked only by simple wooden crosses, gradually tilting their way back to the soil.

Even once these settlements have been long abandoned, it is a tribal custom for descendants of those interred there to return each year on All Souls Day, to clean the grave and place flowers on it, out of respect for their ancestors. This happens even in the most remote, long-deserted places. I think it’s a wonderful custom we’d all do well to emulate.

En route to pavement at the village of Kohatk, I passed the remnants of abandoned vehicles. These are, sadly, commonplace on the reservation – leftovers from human- and drug-smuggling ventures gone bad.

That completed my time in the Copperosity Hills. It’s a great area which is seldom visited, but worth your time if you can go. The five summits there are all enjoyable.

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