What is Humphreys Peak Trail?
Humphreys Peak is the highest point in Arizona at 12,633 feet, the tallest of the summits left standing on the rim of the San Francisco Peaks volcano, and the trail to it is the only walk in the state that takes you through every life zone from ponderosa to tundra. Humphreys Trail No. 151 starts at the north end of the Arizona Snowbowl’s lower parking lot at 9,340 feet, crosses a ski meadow, and climbs in long switchbacks through spruce, fir and bristlecone pine to the saddle at about 11,800 feet. From there it turns north along a bare, wind-scoured ridge of loose volcanic rock, over several false summits, to the top. The Forest Service calls it about 5 miles one way with 3,420 feet of gain, very strenuous, three to four hours up.
The summit view runs from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim to the Mogollon Rim. The ridge is also the most exposed terrain in Arizona; in July and August a monsoon cell builds over the Peaks most afternoons, and people have been killed by lightning up here. The trail is inside the 18,960-acre Kachina Peaks Wilderness, and above the treeline you stay on it: the San Francisco Peaks groundsel, a small yellow-flowered plant, grows nowhere else on earth, and the Forest Service closes the alpine zone to off-trail travel to protect it.
What you get is the state high point in a day, free, from a paved lot, with a view that takes in a quarter of Arizona. What you do not get is an easy day or a late one: the altitude starts 8,000 feet above Scottsdale, there is no water on the route, the lot fills by seven on summer weekends, and from July through September the ridge belongs to the weather after noon.
How to hike Humphreys right
Pay nothing, check the lot rules. None for the trail and no permit for day hikes. Snowbowl manages the lots and runs summer events; check its site for any parking charge on the day you go. Overnight parking for wilderness hikers is allowed only in the lots below the ski area gate.
Get there. Loop 101 north to I-17, I-17 north into Flagstaff, where it becomes Milton Road; follow it to Route 66, turn left, then right on Humphreys Street, which becomes US 180 north. About 7 miles out of town, turn right on Snowbowl Road (FR 516) and climb 7 miles of paved switchbacks to the resort. Park in the lower lot (Lot 1); the trailhead is at its far north end. About 2 hours 45 minutes from Old Town, which is why most people sleep in Flagstaff and start at dawn. Parking along Snowbowl Road is prohibited, and the lot is full by seven on summer weekends.
Pick the season and start early. Late June, after the snow melts and before the monsoon, and September, after it ends, are the windows; late September adds the aspens on Snowbowl Road and a dry, cold, lightning-free ridge, which is the best version of this hike. In July and August be walking by 5:30; the storms build over the Peaks by one. Snow lingers on the upper switchbacks into June and returns in October, and it can snow on the summit in any month. In winter this is an avalanche-aware mountaineering route, not a hike.
Set a turn-around time and keep it. From July through September expect lightning after noon; the Forest Service’s instruction is to turn around and get below the treeline when a storm is building, and the turn-around time you set in the parking lot is the one that matters. The saddle at 11,800 feet is where most people decide, and it is a fine place to stop if the sky to the southwest has anvils in it.
Water and clothing. There is no water on the trail. Carry three liters per person, a real shell and gloves even in August; the summit wind is 30 degrees colder than Flagstaff. Poles save your knees on the way down.
Respect the altitude. You left Scottsdale at 1,250 feet. Headache, nausea and poor judgment above the saddle are altitude sickness; the cure is descent. If you drove up from the Valley that morning you will feel it at the saddle; walk slower than feels necessary and eat something.
The ridge. Above the treeline the trail crosses loose volcanic rock and several false summits. Stay on it; the groundsel is the reason, and the rule is enforced.
Rules and dogs. Dogs on leash, waste packed out; the sharp rock is hard on paws. No camping or fires above 11,000 feet, no camping in the Inner Basin, no bikes in the wilderness, no leaving the trail above the trees.
Skip it if you cannot start early or want a summit without the altitude. Browns Peak on Four Peaks is the Valley’s own high point with half the drive. Otherwise make it a weekend: camp at Fort Tuthill or Lockett Meadow when it reopens, hike at dawn, and see the Lava River Cave on the way home.
The sacred mountain with a ski lift on it
The mountain you climb is the stump of a much bigger one. The San Francisco Peaks are a dormant stratovolcano whose summit, the Geological Survey estimates, once stood 15,000 to 16,000 feet before a collapse or blast on the order of Mount St. Helens in 1980 blew out its east side and left the ring of peaks, Humphreys, Agassiz, Fremont and Doyle, around the open bowl of the Inner Basin. It is the only alpine tundra in Arizona, and the San Francisco Peaks groundsel that grows on its scree grows nowhere else.
To the Hopi the mountain is Aaloosaktukwi, the home of the katsinam who bring rain to the mesas; to the Navajo it is Dook’o’oosłííd, “the summit that never melts”, the sacred mountain of the west that bounds their world. The Havasupai and Zuni hold it sacred as well, and more than a dozen tribes in all. The name on the map came from a survey party around 1870, honoring General Andrew A. Humphreys, a Union general who became chief of the Army Corps of Engineers and never saw it. A government map of 1903 mislabeled it “San Francisco Peak”, the Board on Geographic Names made the error official in 1911, and the name was corrected in 1933.
Skiing came early. Ole and Pete Solberg were gliding down Mars Hill above Flagstaff on homemade wooden skis in 1915, and in 1938 the Forest Service permitted a road and a lodge at Hart Prairie on the peak’s west face: the Arizona Snowbowl, which passed to private operators in 1941. For thirty years it was a small ski hill. In 1969 a full resort was proposed, and the tribes fought it for a decade; the Forest Service approved a new lodge, a paved road, four lifts and 777 acres in 1979, approved the road in 1980 over Hopi and Navajo protests, and the consolidated suit, Wilson v. Block, was denied in 1983. Congress drew the compromise line the next year: the Kachina Peaks Wilderness, designated in 1984, wraps the summits above the ski area, which is why the trail leaves a resort parking lot and enters a wilderness within a few hundred yards.
The second fight was over water. Flagstaff agreed in 2002 to sell Snowbowl reclaimed wastewater for snowmaking; the Forest Service approved it in 2005; a Ninth Circuit panel ruled for the tribes in 2008 and was reversed by the full court; the Supreme Court declined the case in 2009; 25 people were arrested protesting the pipeline in 2011; and in the winter of 2012 Snowbowl became the first ski area in the world to make its snow almost entirely from treated sewage effluent. The Hopi sued again over a 20-year water deal in 2014, the year a new owner bought the resort; a six-seat high-speed chair followed in 2016 and a gondola in 2020. The mountain the Hopi call home to the rain spirits now has snow sprayed on it from Flagstaff’s sewers, and the trail to its top starts between the two.
The ridge has its own record. In 2016 a 17-year-old was killed and two other teenagers injured by lightning near the summit, one of several such deaths; the Forest Service’s turn-around advice is written in them. A newer survey puts the summit at 12,637 feet, four feet above the figure on every sign.
Why it matters
Humphreys is the roof of Arizona and the clearest case in the state of a sacred mountain shared, unwillingly, with a business, and the trail walks straight through the argument: a resort lot, a wilderness boundary, a tundra plant that exists nowhere else, and a ridge that has killed hikers who stayed too long. It explains why the tribes fought for fifty years, why the Forest Service drew the wilderness line where it did, and why Flagstaff’s sewage is a theological question. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is plain. It is the one hike in the state that takes you from ponderosa to tundra and the best view in Arizona for the price of a free parking space, and it demands a dawn start, three liters, a shell and a turn-around time you keep. Go in late June or September, sleep in Flagstaff, and be off the ridge by noon.