Camelback Mountain at the Hour the Sandstone Glows

Camelback Mountain at the Hour the Sandstone Glows

Camelback Mountain rises 2,704 feet from the middle of Phoenix's most expensive neighborhoods, and the Echo Canyon Trail to its summit is the city's most popular hike — a 1.2-mile scramble that gains 1,280 feet in elevation and will introduce your quadriceps to a vocabulary of complaint they didn't know they had.

The trailhead is off McDonald Drive in the Echo Canyon Recreation Area, and at five in the morning the parking lot is already half full because Phoenicians understand that hiking Camelback after nine AM in summer is not exercise but a medical event. The first section climbs through red sandstone boulders with iron handrails bolted into the rock, and the city falls away below you with every step — Scottsdale to the east, downtown Phoenix to the west, and the McDowell Mountains to the north rimming the valley like a geological picture frame.

The final push to the summit is hands-and-feet scrambling over exposed rock, and the reward is a 360-degree panorama that puts the entire Valley of the Sun in your hands. The urban grid stretches to every horizon, interrupted only by the dark shapes of other desert mountains — Piestewa Peak, South Mountain, the Superstitions in the far east — and the sky above is the particular shade of deep, infinite blue that only desert air can produce.

Best season: November through March. Summer starts at 5 AM and still reaches triple digits by mid-morning. The trailhead closes during excessive heat warnings, and the mountain rescue team is not joking when they say bring a liter of water per person per hour. The sunset from the summit in December — when the air is cool enough to linger and the city lights begin to bloom below — is the best free show in Arizona.