What it means
A scramble is the point where a hike stops being a walk and your hands get involved. You are not climbing with ropes, but you are pulling yourself up rock, reaching for holds, and sometimes sitting down to slide off a ledge on the way back. Hikers grade this terrain with classes: Class 1 is a trail you can walk with your hands in your pockets, Class 2 needs a hand now and then, Class 3 is real scrambling, Class 4 is easy climbing where a fall could kill you, and Class 5 is roped rock climbing.
Around Scottsdale the word mostly means one place: Camelback Mountain. The upper half of the Echo Canyon Trail is a Class 2 to 3 scramble up boulders and slabs, with steel handrails where the grade gives up on being a trail. Visitors who expect a hike meet a rock face, and the difference between those two words is the reason the mountain is among the most rescued in the country.
The trail itself is covered in the Echo Canyon guide, and the choice of routes in Echo Canyon vs. Cholla.
Where you’ll meet it
Trail descriptions on hiking apps, Camelback warnings from Phoenix, climbing guidebooks for Tom’s Thumb and Pinnacle Peak, and rescue stories on the evening news.
Where the word came from
“Scramble” is ordinary English for clambering on hands and feet; hikers simply adopted it for the in-between terrain. The numbers came later and from California. In the 1930s the Sierra Club adapted a numerical scale to rate routes in the Sierra Nevada, originally running from Class 1 to Class 6. In the 1950s, climbers at Tahquitz Peak in Southern California, among them Royal Robbins, Don Wilson and Chuck Wilts, split the fifth class into decimal grades, 5.0 upward. The result became known as the Yosemite Decimal System, even though it was standardized at Tahquitz.
The lower classes are the ones hikers use. Class 1 is trail walking. Class 2 is simple scrambling with occasional use of the hands. Class 3 is scrambling where a rope could be carried. Class 4 is simple climbing, often with exposure, where a rope is often used and falls could be fatal. The line between 3 and 4 has always been arguable, which is why two guidebooks can grade the same pitch differently.
Exposure is the companion word. It means a drop: how far you would fall if you slipped. A short Class 3 move above a soft landing is far less serious than an easy Class 2 ledge above a cliff, and experienced hikers judge both together.
What it is not
A scramble is not rock climbing, which is Class 5 and needs ropes and training. The summit block of Pinnacle Peak and the top of Tom’s Thumb are climbing; the hiking trails stop below them. And a scramble is not a “steep hike”: the Thompson Peak road is brutally steep, but it is Class 1.
The fine print
Phoenix uses its own ski-area style scale on trail signs, from green circles for paved, nearly flat paths to double black diamonds for trails with the maximum elevation gain and exposure. Both Camelback summit trails carry the double black. Echo Canyon gains about 1,400 feet in 1.14 miles, almost all of it in the second half, and the handrails sit on the steepest of it.
The rescue line is busy. The City of Phoenix says more than 200 hikers a year are rescued from its desert and mountain parks and preserves, and Camelback supplies a large share. Its advice is plain: bring more water than you think, hike in the cool hours, and turn around and head back before you have drunk all of your water. In summer, heat trail closures remove the choice for most of the day.
Scottsdale’s own trails are a different animal. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve’s official routes are built to walking standards, and the city asks visitors to stay on them. The scrambling in the McDowells is off-trail or on climbers’ rock, like the granite of Tom’s Thumb, first climbed on September 19, 1964 by local mountaineer Tom Kreuser.
The best rule for any scramble is the turn-around time: decide before the hard part when you will quit, and quit then. Going up is optional. Getting down is not.