Scottsdale has more than 200 miles of trail inside the city limits, most of it in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, the largest urban preserve of its kind in the country. That’s a lot of choice, and the visitor’s instinct, which is to hike Camelback because it’s the one they’ve heard of, is often wrong. This is our list, ranked by how good the hike is rather than how famous, with the difficulty stated plainly. We’ve done every one of them more times than we can count, mostly before sunrise.
1. Tom’s Thumb
About two miles and roughly 1,200 feet of switchbacks from the trailhead on 128th Street to a 140-foot granite spire on the McDowell ridgeline, with the whole northern desert behind you and the Valley spread out ahead. It’s the hardest thing the Preserve asks of an ordinary hiker and the best summit in the city: harder than it looks, better than Camelback, and almost never crowded. Two and a half to three hours. The Marcus Landslide walk starts from the same lot for anyone who’d rather stay flat.
2. Camelback Mountain, Echo Canyon
The Valley’s signature summit: 1.14 miles and about 1,400 feet to the 2,704-foot top, with handrails bolted into the sections where the trail stops being a trail. It’s technically in Phoenix on the Paradise Valley line and it’s the hike everyone wants, which is why the lot is a lottery by 6:30 AM. It earns its place; it’s just not the top of the list. Our Echo Canyon vs. Cholla note settles the route question. Two hours if you’re fit, three if you’re honest.
3. Pinnacle Peak
A 1.75-mile trail each way, about three and a half miles round trip, around north Scottsdale’s signature granite spire, inside a 150-acre city park, and the best short hike in the city. It climbs enough to feel like a hike, the views run from the Four Peaks to Camelback, and the fact you can walk it at all is the result of a seven-year fight after development locked the public out. Two hours at a conversational pace. It’s the one we send everyone.
4. Sunrise Peak
From the neighborhood trailhead at the end of Via Linda, about two miles and 1,100 feet to a real 3,069-foot McDowell summit. The name is an instruction: locals are on top at first light, and the view east over Fountain Hills to the Four Peaks is the best sunrise in the city. Less crowded than Camelback, easier than the Thumb, and the hike we’d pick for a strong first-timer.
5. The Gateway Loop
The Gateway Trailhead is the Preserve’s flagship, a rammed-earth building with real restrooms and a big lot, and its 4.4-mile loop is Scottsdale’s default hike: a gentle climb to a saddle, a long view, and a descent through the bajada. Two hours. It’s crowded because it’s good. Our Gateway protocols cover the etiquette; the north Scottsdale hikes note covers where to go when you’ve done it twice.
6. Windgate–Bell Pass Loop
The classic hard loop: about 9.5 miles and 2,000 feet from Gateway, over Bell Pass at roughly 3,200 feet and Windgate at about 3,030, with Thompson Peak looming over the whole thing. Four to five hours, a real day, and the best long hike inside the city. Add the Thompson Peak summit by way of the service road so steep it feels like a dare, and it’s twelve miles and 3,500-plus feet.
7. Brown’s Ranch
The northern Preserve’s main gate and the connoisseur’s trailhead: rolling crushed-granite trails through absurdly dense saguaro forest, almost no elevation, and the rusted leftovers of a 44,000-acre cattle operation. This is the hike for the day you want the desert without the climb, for guests who don’t hike, and for the wildflowers in March. Pick any loop from three to eight miles. Fraesfield, on Rio Verde Drive, is the same country with nobody on it.
8. Lost Dog Wash
The Preserve’s southern entrance off Via Linda: an award-winning trailhead, an amphitheater, and a web of gentle trails including the Taliesin Overlook, which looks down on Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter camp. The best dog hike in the city (leashed), the best beginner hike, and the calmest lot on a Saturday. The Quartz Trail connects it to Gateway across 4.9 gentle miles.
9. Granite Mountain Loop
Twenty minutes of desert road past everything else, the far-northeast trailhead hides the view until it wants to show you, and the 5.6-mile loop circles one of the northern desert’s granite domes. Three hours. Nobody’s there. Go in winter.
10. Papago and the Greenbelt
Two flat ones that don’t belong on a hiking list and belong on this one anyway. Hole-in-the-Rock is a ten-minute scramble to a sandstone window that frames the sunset over Phoenix; do it at dusk. The Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt is eleven miles of paved path through a chain of parks and lakes, and the walk from Chaparral to Vista del Camino is the city’s best evening stroll.
Across the line
McDowell Mountain Regional Park, reached through Fountain Hills, is the back side of the same range with camping and mountain-bike loops; you pay to get in. The Superstitions, an hour east, are the day-trip.
The rules
- Start at sunrise, or before it. From May through September this isn’t advice; the summer sunrise rules are the difference between a hike and a rescue. Phoenix closes Camelback on extreme-heat days; the Preserve doesn’t close, and it doesn’t need to, because the heat does the closing.
- Carry more water than you think. A liter per hour in the warm months, and turn around when half of it’s gone. The Field Kit has the bottles and the reservoir.
- The Preserve is sunrise to sunset. Trailhead gates lock. Plan the descent.
- Dogs on a six-foot leash in the Preserve, none on Camelback. Our dog guide has the trail list.
- Wildlife is real. Rattlesnakes from March to October, on the trail and warming up on the rock. Watch your step and your hands; the wildlife field guide explains the rest.
- The best months are November through March. October and April are fine early. The rest is sunrise-only.
The one-week plan
Pinnacle Peak the first morning to calibrate. Sunrise Peak or Gateway the second. Tom’s Thumb the third, once you know what the heat does. Brown’s Ranch on the day your legs want off. Camelback last, at dawn, so you can say you did. That’s the city’s whole range in five mornings, and every one of them is over by nine.