Arizona Hike 1: Camelback Mountain

Arizona Hike 1 — Camelback Mountain, 2,706 feet, 2.6 miles hiked

On my second full day in Arizona, I joined my host for the week, high school friend Greg, and Kelly, his MSU friend from Chicago, to hike the Phoenix area’s most popular mountain — Camelback. By the time we hit the trail around 10 a.m., it was already packed. Securing a parking spot in the lot was no easy task. Camelback was about a half-hour drive from Tempe, where Greg lives a little east of downtown Phoenix, and obviously lots of folks didn’t mind making a little drive to reach it.

The mountain stands a little over 2,700 feet and offers two routes to its summit. Naturally, we chose the more difficult one. Within a tenth or two of a mile, we were hiking up a steep rock incline — so steep, in fact, that a metal railing was erected in the middle of the trail for people both ascending and descending to use as leverage.

The trail, as was the case with just about all my Arizona hikes, was in the open and offered expansive, impressive views as soon as we started walking. Within a few minutes, I could see downtown Phoenix and the rest of the valley. I could see the mountain ranges that surround the valley dozens of miles in the distance. This made the hiking easier.

But it was no walk in the park.

Soon, the trail turned and we faced a steep incline up a combination of rock slabs and, more dangerously, loose rocks. This incline reminded me a bit of hiking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. We pushed upward, breathing pretty hard.

I was a bit surprised by the diversity of people making the difficult climb. There were people in athletic shorts and people in jeans. People with Camelbacks and people with no water. Grandpas and grandmas and 4-year-olds. One mother urged her son to push onward, telling him, “We’re just 9 minutes from the top!”

Seven and a half minutes later, we had survived the steep ascent and joined a crowd of about 50 people on top of the jagged, rocky summit. As is usually the case, I scanned the summit for a rocky outcropping that would make for a cool picture spot and found one. We exchanged turns taking pictures from the outlook, admiring the 360-degree views, and I marveled at how many people had made the hike. It had been no easy thing.