If You Want it Bad Enough, Maybe You'll See It. By Kevin Franklin THEY MUST HAVE been desperate for coffee," Dom Cardea says. Our band of four humans and two dogs is riding in my Bronco, heading east from Ajo toward Coffee Pot Mountain. "I bet they hadn't had coffee for months," Ami Pate says. "I'm thinking years," I say. "Look at it, it doesn't look anything like a coffee pot. The guys who named that rock must have been delusional for coffee. I bet they would have killed for it." The rhyolitic volcanic crag that makes up Coffee Pot Mountain has two peaks, split by a shallow gap. If you have a powerful imagination, squint at twilight when there's a lot of dust in the air--and haven't had a cup of coffee for a long, long time--you might think of the western peak as a spout and the eastern peak as the top of a coffee pot. But I wouldn't. We're here to climb Coffee Pot Mountain because it's a dramatic peak rising up off the Sonoran Desert floor. Coffee Pot is on the southernmost flank of the Sauceda Mountain Range, just across the boundary from the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. To the east lies the vast Tohono O'odham Reservation. Because of the nearby military control and reservation land, this little corner of BLM territory remains remote and mostly untainted. A utility road runs from south of Ajo past the mountain. The road provides quick, albeit rough in some sections, access to the 3,500-foot peak. The eastern peak is a near-vertical crag that would be hazardous for human climbing, and impossible for dog climbing. We skirt around it on the northern side and make for the taller western "spout" peak. The five miles between Coffee Pot and the Batamote Mountains to the south leave a tremendous view of open, empty desert. Large boulders cover the steep slope of the peak and saguaros and ironwood trees fill the space in between. Down in the plain the vegetation is thinner, and a slight haze separates us from the Batamotes, giving the impression of being part of a much larger landscape. This is what a desert is all about--not swimming pools, golf courses and sprawl, but quiet, lonely places. Humans here are like wayward travelers, making brief ventures from their artificial ecosystems. We scramble up to the relatively flat peak and look off into the foothills of the Sauceda Mountains. The hard, red tuff and ash rocks have resisted weathering, creating a maze of low-lying peaks and crags separated by the green bands of the washes. "That's the kind of place you could disappear into with a backpack and not see anybody for weeks," Ami says. Reading the trail register we note no one has signed it in two years. The last guy here witnessed a huge cloud of smoke and dust rise from the nearby bombing range, like some sort of man-made thunderhead. The irony of the restrictions imposed because of the bombing range is that they do a remarkably good job of preserving wilderness--except, of course, the unfortunate site they blow to hell. We break out Ami's Thermos and enjoy a hot cup of joe. You know we had to do it. As we're packing up, we hear a distant rumbling. I look to the north onto the bombing range and see a rapidly expanding detonation cloud. It's one thing to know a place is a bombing range; it's quite another to watch it getting bombed. So much for my delusions about a pristine landscape. This peak doesn't look much like a coffee pot, and a bombing range doesn't make for much of a wilderness, but I suppose it all depends on how much you want something. With an open-pit mine slated for the lovely Santa Ritas south of Tucson, tacky urban sprawl consuming the Tortolitas, and God-knows-what nonsense going on with the Rincons and Rocking K, a man can get desperate enough to see wilderness in a bombing range. Getting There Coffee Pot Mountain is 16 miles northeast of Ajo. Follow the utility road south of the mine tailings, and it'll take you right there.

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