What is the Black Canyon Trail?
The Black Canyon Trail is about 80 miles of singletrack and old two-track on BLM land, following the corridor of a historic sheep driveway north from the edge of Phoenix, through the Agua Fria and New River country, past Black Canyon City and up into the foothills of the Bradshaws. It is a National Recreation Trail and an IMBA Epic, and for mountain bikers it is the long ride in central Arizona: an overall descent from north to south of roughly 3,900 feet of climbing against 6,600 of dropping, done as a one-day shuttle by the strong and a two-day bikepack by everyone else.
The southern end is the Bob Bentley Trailhead on Carefree Highway, just west of the Arizona Game and Fish headquarters and the Ben Avery Shooting Facility. The name suggests a facility; what exists is a gate in a fence, no sign, no lot and the sound of gunfire. The functional southern trailhead is Emery Henderson on New River Road, 10.6 trail miles north, with a paved, striped lot, vault toilets and, most of the season, a volunteer host. The segment between them is flat two-track with about 550 feet of climbing, the least interesting mile-for-mile on the whole route. North of the New River crossing the trail turns stony, rolls over low ridges and starts to earn its reputation.
What you get is the start of the best long trail in central Arizona, free, 40 minutes from Old Town, open to feet, hooves and wheels. What you do not get at this end is scenery, shade, water, quiet or a trailhead worth the name; those start at New River.
How to do the Black Canyon Trail right
Pay nothing, carry the right permit. None, no pass, no permit for individual use. E-bikes are prohibited at the Emery Henderson gate because the land is BLM. A short piece near the south end crosses State Trust Land, which technically requires a State Land recreation permit. Commercial and competitive events need a BLM special recreation permit.
Get there. Take Loop 101 west to I-17 north, then exit at Carefree Highway (SR 74) and go west about two miles past the Game and Fish building; the Bob Bentley gate is on the north side of the highway near 72nd Avenue, roughly 40 minutes from Old Town. People park on the wide shoulder between the road and the Ben Avery fence. For Emery Henderson, continue north on I-17 to exit 233 (New River Road) and go west about three miles; the trailhead is on the north side. The last stretch of New River Road is paved; the lot is paved too.
Start at Emery Henderson. Skip Bob Bentley unless you need the full end-to-end. Emery Henderson has a real lot, a toilet and usually a volunteer host, and from it you ride or hike north toward the New River crossing and the first low ridges, which is where the trail stops being a flat two-track and starts being the Black Canyon Trail. Hikers get the best out-and-back by going north about four miles to the ridges and back.
Pick the season. The BLM recommends November through April and means it. The southern 20 miles are low, open desert with no shade; from May through September this is excessive-heat country.
Water. None on the trail. Carry everything; the host station at Emery Henderson may or may not have some. The New River and Agua Fria crossings run only after storms and can be deep enough to stop a ride in a wet February; the New River crossing can be mid-shin deep in a wet winter.
Navigate. Bring a map or a GPX; the junctions near the state trust land boundary are confusing and the BLM pushes you to MTB Project for the line.
Share the trail. Horses are heavy from Emery Henderson, and the trail is busiest with bikes on winter weekends. Yield to horses, and announce yourself on blind corners.
Noise and camping. The Ben Avery range operates most days; the first miles from Bob Bentley are loud. Dispersed camping is allowed on BLM land along the trail for up to 14 days, but not at the day-use Emery Henderson lot.
Dogs. Allowed; the trail is open desert with no water, so a winter morning is the dog’s hike, not a spring afternoon.
Skip it if you want a scenic hike with a lot at the trailhead and a view at the turnaround. For that, Apache Wash is closer and prettier, Daisy Mountain is the summit, and Badger Springs in Agua Fria National Monument has the petroglyphs and the river. Come here for distance, for the bike, or because you intend to see Black Canyon City the slow way.
A sheep driveway that became a bike trail
The BLM’s own description of the trail starts before the sheep: the corridor between the Agua Fria and the Bradshaw foothills has been a route for Native travelers and traders since prehistoric times. The Hohokam farmed the Agua Fria and left the pueblos and petroglyphs that Agua Fria National Monument now protects a few miles north, and the Yavapai ranged the same country until the Army removed them in the 1870s. The trail’s line, north along the drainage divides between the Agua Fria and the New River, is the obvious way to walk from the Valley to the mountains, and people have been walking it for a long time.
The sheep gave it a legal shape. In the early twentieth century the federal government set the route aside as a livestock driveway, a strip of public land along which Arizona’s sheepmen could move their flocks each spring from the Valley’s winter pastures to summer range in the Bradshaws and beyond, and back each fall; the same economy built the Verde River Sheep Bridge, and the BLM’s trail pages still describe the Black Canyon Trail as following a historic livestock driveway. When the Bureau of Land Management was created in 1946 it inherited the corridor, and the sheep kept using it into the second half of the century as the drives dwindled everywhere.
The trail is the driveway’s second life. Through the 2000s the BLM’s Hassayampa Field Office and volunteer trail builders, working segment by segment from Carefree Highway north, rebuilt the old two-track and stock paths as purpose-built singletrack, and the route was designated a National Recreation Trail; the BLM’s pages call it one without giving the year, and I could not pin it. The International Mountain Bicycling Association, which helped write the BLM’s trail descriptions, named it an Epic, one of a few dozen rides in the country with the label, and the 80-mile line from Carefree Highway to the Bradshaws became central Arizona’s long ride, with Table Mesa, Black Canyon City, Gloriana and Big Bug trailheads along the way. The two southern trailheads carry the names of people the BLM has not written up on its pages; the agency’s own listing starts at Emery Henderson, and Bob Bentley’s gate on Carefree Highway is the terminus only on the map.
What is coming is the Valley. Anthem and the Loop 303 corridor have grown to within sight of the trail’s southern miles, the Ben Avery range at its foot is louder than it was, and the first ten miles that the sheep found flat and easy are now the ones everyone skips.
Why it matters
The Black Canyon Trail is the only place within an hour of Scottsdale where you can follow the route the Valley’s sheep took to the mountains every spring for most of a century, and it explains how much of Arizona’s public land was shaped by livestock before it was shaped by recreation: the corridor exists because sheep needed a legal way north, and the trail exists because the BLM kept the corridor. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is split by the first ten miles. Bob Bentley is a gate by a shooting range and the segment north of it is flat and dull; Emery Henderson, 40 minutes from Old Town with a lot and a toilet, is where the trail starts to be worth the drive, and north of the New River crossing it is the best long ride in central Arizona.