What it is
The Peralta Canyon Trail is the hike people mean when they say they hiked the Superstitions. It starts at the Peralta Trailhead, seven dirt miles north of US 60 at the southern edge of the Superstition Wilderness, and climbs a canyon of volcanic hoodoos, columns and balanced rocks for about two and a quarter miles and roughly 1,400 feet to Fremont Saddle. At the saddle the canyon ends and the view begins: Weaver’s Needle, a thousand-foot plug of eroded volcanic rock, standing alone across the basin, with the rest of the range behind it. It is the single most photographed view in the Superstitions and the place where every version of the Lost Dutchman legend tells you to stand.
The trail is well built and well used. It is rocky, steep in the upper third, and has a few short rock steps that count as hiking, not climbing. A fit twelve-year-old does it. The Cave Trail that some guidebooks offer as a loop descent is a different animal, a class 3 scramble on slick tuff, and our scramble ratings explain why it is not for a first visit.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because nothing in the McDowells does this. Tom’s Thumb gives you a granite monolith and a view of the city; Peralta gives you a canyon of hoodoos and a view of a mountain range with no city in it. Our best hikes note ends at the Preserve boundary, and for the visitor who has done its top three and wants the next one, this is it.
The practical version
About 70 minutes from Old Town, the last six and a half miles on graded dirt. No fee, no permit, a register to sign, a vault toilet, no water. Round trip to the saddle is about 4.7 miles and three to four hours. The lot holds fifty or sixty cars and fills by half past eight on winter weekends. October through April only; the canyon is a furnace by May.
When to go
December through February is the season proper: cool mornings, the canyon in shade until nine, and a saddle you can sit at for half an hour. November and March are fine with an early start. April is the edge, and the first hot week of it turns this into a dawn hike under our summer sunrise rules. From May into September, do not. The upper canyon faces south, the rock radiates, and the trailhead is seven miles of dirt from anyone who could help.
Weekends in season fill the lot by eight thirty and the trail is a procession; weekdays are quiet enough to hear the canyon wrens. After a wet storm the road can close and the trail runs with water in the low crossings; give it a day.
The hike, in stages
- The lower canyon (first mile). Gentle, following the creek bed, with the first hoodoos appearing on the left wall.
- The middle canyon. The trail steepens and switchbacks between columns; this is the stretch that makes the hike, and the place to stop looking at your feet.
- The upper canyon to the saddle. Steeper, rockier, a few steps where hands help. The saddle arrives suddenly.
- Fremont Saddle. Walk right along the ridge to the outcrops for the better view of the Needle and shelter from the wind. This is lunch.
- Down the same way. The standard trail is the right descent. The Cave Trail is for people who already know it.
Beyond the saddle
Strong hikers continue down the far side toward Boulder Canyon and the base of the Needle, or make the long loop through the wilderness that our day trips note warns about. Those are full days with route-finding; the saddle is the hike.
With kids and dogs
A fit ten- or twelve-year-old who has done Tom’s Thumb will manage the saddle and remember it. Younger children are happy in the lower canyon among the hoodoos, which is a fine hour on its own. Dogs are allowed in the wilderness on leash, and the rock is hard on paws in the upper canyon.
The story
The Superstitions are the remains of a series of volcanic eruptions, and the western range you walk into here is welded ash, tuff and the plugs left when the vents cooled. Weaver’s Needle is one of those plugs, stripped of the softer rock around it, and the hoodoos of Peralta Canyon are the same tuff weathered into columns. There is almost no gold in rock like this, which has not stopped anyone. The trail and the canyon take their name from the Peralta family of the legend, Mexican miners said to have worked a mine here before an Apache massacre in the 1840s, and Fremont Saddle from the explorer who never came within a hundred miles of it. Our Superstitions lexicon entry sorts the story from the geology.
The wilderness itself was designated in 1964 and the Peralta Trailhead became its busiest gate, which is why the Forest Service keeps the road graded and the register stocked. Fires in recent years burned through parts of the western wilderness, and the Forest Service’s standing warning about unstable conditions and recovering vegetation is why you stay on the trail even where a shortcut looks obvious.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s hikers graduate here. The Preserve’s Tom’s Thumb and Camelback are the local hard hikes; the Peralta Trail is where people go the winter after they have done them, and the parking lot on a January Saturday is half Scottsdale plates. The Preserve’s conservancy stewards have a saying about the Superstitions being where the Preserve’s rules stop and your judgment starts, which is about right.
Getting there
From Old Town, the 101 south to the 202 east, the 202 to US 60 east through Mesa and Apache Junction; just past Gold Canyon, turn left (north) on Peralta Road. It is paved for a mile and then graded dirt for about six and a half miles to the trailhead lot at the dead end, with an overflow area a couple of hundred yards before it. About 70 minutes from Old Town with no traffic, more if the road is washboarded. The Hieroglyphic Trail in Gold Canyon is the easy alternative ten minutes back toward town if the lot is full.