What is the Hummingbird Springs Wilderness?
An hour west of the last Buckeye subdivision, the Belmont Mountains end in a cluster of banded volcanic peaks that the BLM set aside in 1990 as the Hummingbird Springs Wilderness: 31,200 acres of saguaro, ocotillo and paloverde bajada climbing to Sugarloaf Mountain, 3,418 feet, the highest point in the range. Its southwest edge touches the Big Horn Mountains Wilderness, 21,000 acres more, with only a jeep trail between them, so the two together make a block of roadless desert bigger than Scottsdale. Desert bighorn, mule deer and desert tortoise live here. People mostly do not. The agency’s description is almost comic in its brevity: without maintained trails, the area can be backpacked easily, and primitive campsites abound.
The Google Maps pin sits inside the wilderness about half a mile north of Hummingbird Springs itself, a seep at roughly 1,960 feet that is usually dry and gives the place its name. A vehicle corridor between the two wildernesses reaches it from the canal and powerline roads north of I-10, which is how off-roaders come through on the 28-mile Tonopah-to-Eagle Eye route. From the springs, Sugarloaf is about two miles northeast and 1,450 feet up, and the way is the puzzle: layered cliff bands ring the summit and the breaks in them are not obvious from below. One party that linked two neighboring peaks with Sugarloaf called it an 11.9-mile, 3,200-foot class 3 day and gave it a 9 out of 10 for solitude. That is the honest rating.
What you get is a federal wilderness with a real summit, a two-hour drive from Scottsdale and nobody on it. What you do not get is a trail, a sign, a toilet, a drop of water or anyone within 55 miles to help if the route goes wrong.
How to hike Hummingbird Springs right
Pay nothing, respect the lines. No fee, permit or pass for individuals. Commercial and large group events need a BLM special recreation permit. Some parcels around the boundary are State Trust Land, which requires a State Land recreation permit, and some are private and need the owner’s permission; the BLM’s map shows which.
Get there. Loop 101 south to I-10 west for about 60 miles, past Tonopah, to the Salome Road exit (81) or back at exit 94 (Tonopah). From either, canal and powerline service roads lead north; the southeast approach follows a well-graded canal road under the freeway and north, then a rougher spur west into the corridor toward the springs, passenger-car grade for most of the way and high clearance for the last part. Figure two hours from Old Town, the last 45 minutes on dirt. From the north, Eagle Eye Road south of Aguila on US 60 reaches the boundary over rougher ground with washed-out crossings reported in 2023. Nothing is signed. Download the BLM wilderness map and a satellite layer before you leave Buckeye, because the canal roads all look alike.
Pick the season. November through March. The rock faces south and the nearest shade is the car. A summit day in April is already a heat problem; from May to October this is not a hike.
Water. None. The springs are not reliable, found dry on both visits by one party in 2020, and nothing else exists. Four liters per person for a summit day.
Route-find Sugarloaf on purpose. Start walking from the Hummingbird Springs end of the corridor to save miles. Follow the washes to the base, then pick a line that uses the breaks in the cliff bands rather than the direct slope; the easy lines are class 2 and the wrong ones throw in class 3 moves. Read scramble and class ratings if those terms are new. Start at first light and set a turnaround time, because the nearest help is Tonopah.
Camp outside the line, walk inside it. Dispersed camping is allowed on the BLM land outside the wilderness, including along the corridor roads, and backpacking inside it. No motor vehicles or bicycles past the boundary; the corridor road is the exception. No sites, toilets or fire rings; use a stove during restrictions and pack out everything. Dogs are fine.
Skip it if you want the same empty desert with a trail and a toilet. Belmont Mountain, on the other end of the same range, has a route people actually follow; Quartz Peak in the Sierra Estrella is the Valley’s nearer trailless-feeling summit with a real trail. For a tamer BLM night under the same stars, Saddle Mountain off the Tonopah exit has camping on the way.
Wilderness by inventory
The Tonopah Desert was a place to cross, not to stay. Hohokam farmers worked the Gila to the south and Yavapai bands held the mountains to the north, and the springs in the little ranges between, Hummingbird among them, were the water that made the crossing possible; the washes still carry sherds, grinding sites and the trails that connected one seep to the next. The Anglo history is thin by design. Prospectors combed the Belmonts and the Big Horns from the 1860s on, small claims in what became the Osborn mining district came and went, and a copper deposit at Hummingbird Spring itself, later called the U.S. Mine, is recorded as discovered in 1942. None of it amounted to a town, a road or a mill that lasted.
That emptiness is what made it a wilderness. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 gave the Bureau of Land Management, which until then had been the government’s leftover-land agency, a mandate to inventory every roadless tract it held for wilderness character, and the Belmont and Big Horn ranges went onto the study list along with dozens of other Arizona ranges that nobody had thought about since the last prospector left. The inventory took most of the 1980s. The result was the Arizona Desert Wilderness Act of 1990, a statewide package that created BLM wilderness areas across the state in one bill, among them the Hummingbird Springs Wilderness, 31,200 acres, and the Big Horn Mountains Wilderness, 21,000 acres, next door. The two were drawn with a jeep trail left between them, the vehicle corridor to the springs, so that the Tonopah-to-Eagle Eye route could stay open to the off-roaders who were already using it.
Nothing was built, because wilderness law forbids building and the BLM had no budget to anyway. No trailhead, no sign at the boundary, no trail to the summit. The agency’s page describes Sugarloaf’s colorful escarpments rising from the Tonopah Desert plains, lists bighorn, mule deer, tortoise, Cooper’s hawks, prairie falcons, golden eagles, kit foxes and Gila monsters, and says that without maintained trails the area can be backpacked easily. The Tonopah-to-Eagle Eye route through the corridor between the two wildernesses stayed what it was, an unsigned dirt track for off-roaders, and the spring that names the place kept drying up; hikers who walked to it twice in 2020 found it dry both times.
What changed was the Valley. Buckeye grew west along I-10 through the 2010s until its last subdivision sat 30 miles from the wilderness boundary, the canal and powerline roads north of the freeway became weekend OHV country, and peakbaggers started posting the first route descriptions of Sugarloaf: which exit, which canal road, which break in the cliff band, how many miles and feet. One such account, 11.9 miles and 3,200 feet for three peaks, is on this guide’s source list because the BLM’s own directions stop at the boundary. The wilderness itself is as it was in 1990: 31,200 acres, no trail, no fee, no water, and a spring that is usually dry.
Why it matters
Hummingbird Springs explains the other half of Arizona’s public land. The national forests got the mountains with trees and the Park Service got the canyons with names; the BLM got the desert ranges between, and in 1990 Congress made dozens of them wilderness in a single act because the inventory said they qualified and nobody had a better use for them. The result is a block of roadless desert bigger than Scottsdale, two hours from Old Town, that almost no one in the Valley has set foot in. For a visitor the verdict is narrow: this is a winter navigation hike for people who already read terrain, with four liters, a downloaded map and a turnaround time; for everyone else, the view of Sugarloaf’s banded cliffs from I-10 at 75 miles an hour is the honest way to see it.