You don't need a lot of gear to do it - just a pair of good rock shoes and gymnasts' chalk, to dry up the sweat on your hands. The 360 that fills the sockets from the top of the Supes puts anything else within a 100-mile radius to shame.īouldering is nothing more than rock climbing without a rope on short boulder faces. One more quick knock on ol' Dromedary Mountain: People say C-Back offers the best local panoramic views, but pay those unschooled people no heed. It's very much like the Camelneck route on Camelback - but worse. More daunting still, the path (loosely termed) follows a natural drainage littered with giant boulders and prickly flora. Now, 1,800 feet in one puny mile is pretty vertical - in fact, it don't get much more straight up than that. There, you're greeted by a vertical view of what's in store for the next, oh, mile and 1,800 vertical feet or so. The heartaches begin at the 1,021st foot. This part of the hike accounts for about 1,020 feet of the total elevation gain. The trek starts near the campground at Lost Dutchman with the part of the hike we call the Tedious Trudge - 1.6 miles of rocky, irritating going on a gradual rise that leads up to and over the base of the Supes and into the maw of the Basin, a humongous natural amphitheater. Math says: two Camelbacks up, two Camelbacks down. The elevation at the jumping-off point, the Siphon Draw trailhead, is about 2,000. The appropriately named formation called the Flatiron - it looks, for all the world, like an iron - rests haughtily at 4,800 feet, at the pinnacle of the Superstition Mountains. These figures would make a Himalaya vet chortle, but they don't tell the whole story, and we'd like to see a snowhead tackle the Camel in, say, August. The tallest point in the Valley, she tops out at 2,704 feet, and there's an elevation gain of about 1,200 feet from the Echo Canyon trailhead. It'll kick your hubric booty.Ĭamelback is one nasty bee-yatch. Ever.Īre you one of those nauseating people who conquer Camelback Mountain in an hour-10 without breaking a sweat? Are you so filled with self-love that you then preen before the opposite sex at the bottom of the trail, flipping your hair and stretching your muscles and stuff while we lowly sweathogs are still grinding up those damned log steps? Well, meet the Flatiron, sucka. You'll see flora and fauna that no longer exist elsewhere, you'll drink in panoramic views that few others have seen, and you'll set your feet down in places that no one else has.
This is what Phoenix - and the upper Sonoran Desert - looked like before we brought the jackhammer down.
So why torture yourself this way? Here's why: A hike into the Estrellas is a trip into the past. It's prime rattler and Gila monster country, and, as noted, you can't see your legs. The vegetation's so thick you can't see your legs, and the vicious flora keeps depositing small, pointy pieces of itself in you. How delightful, you say! Well, that depends on whether you like being slapped across the face or bonked on the head. Whatever route you choose, it'll be random there are no sanctioned trails to guide you to the 3,650-foot pinnacle of the range, so it's all about route-finding your way through the lush, virgin terrain. The route you'll find yourself on travels straight up the gut of the least-accessible mountain range in the greater Phoenix area: the Estrella, or Star, Mountains. We guarantee you'll have one of the times of your life - if you live. Instead, trek east a couple of miles and keep going straight, even after the Pedersen bends north. The outlook from this particular point on the Pedersen is a lot like that: Nowheresville. The glimpse into the vast vacuum of central/western Arizona is the sort of horizon-less view you see in the movies, where some poor sap's got himself lost in the trackless desert, and now he's shuffling along like a zombie in the middle of nowhere. There's a moment when you reach the southwest extremity of this park's Pedersen loop trail that you stare into madness.
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