What is Siphon Draw and the Flatiron?
The Flatiron is the squared-off prow of rock at the north end of Superstition Mountain, the one that looks like the bow of a ship from the US 60. Getting on top of it is the Valley’s rite of passage: about 5.8 miles round trip by the state park’s count, closer to 6.5 by most GPS watches, with roughly 2,800 to 3,100 feet of gain, the second half of it on no trail at all. It is the hike people do after Camelback stops being hard, and it is harder than Camelback by a wide margin.
The hike has two halves. Siphon Draw Trail leaves the southwest lot of Lost Dutchman State Park at about 2,080 feet, crosses into the Tonto National Forest at about eight-tenths of a mile, and climbs steadily into the draw, a narrowing canyon of pale rhyolite that ends in the Basin, a polished slickrock bowl with a waterfall after rain. That is about 2 miles and 1,000 feet, and the maintained trail ends there. The second half gains about 1,800 feet in three-quarters of a mile: a loose gravel slope out of the Basin, a chute, a ledge system up the draw proper marked by white paint dots, and a 10-foot near-vertical wall just under the saddle. From the saddle a flat quarter mile leads out to the edge of the Flatiron at about 4,860 feet, with the whole Valley, Four Peaks and Weavers Needle laid out around you.
What you get is the best summit view within an hour of Scottsdale and the satisfaction of a real climb. What you do not get is a trail above the Basin, any water above the lot, or forgiveness on the way down, which is where nearly every Flatiron injury happens.
How to hike the Flatiron right
Pay the park fee and read the gate hours. Lost Dutchman day use is $10 per vehicle with one person, $20 with two to four; registered campers are exempt, and the park no longer allows hiker drop-offs at the gate. Trails are open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and the gate is locked outside those hours, so your car is inside a closed park if you are late. The park says allow at least five hours round trip; budget six or seven.
Get there. Same as the park: Loop 101 south, US 60 east, Idaho Road north to SR 88, right, and about 5 miles to the park gate, about 50 minutes from Old Town. Follow signs to the Siphon Draw trailhead lot at the southwest end of the park road, which has a restroom and water, holds a few dozen cars and is full by 8 a.m. on winter weekends; overflow parks at the Saguaro day-use area and walks the connector.
Start by 7. The draw faces west and holds shade until mid-morning, so an early start puts you through the Basin and the scramble before the sun does, and leaves margin before the gate.
Pick the season. Late October to early April. The upper route is in full sun by mid-morning; by May the rock is too hot to put a hand on, and the summer rules make this a no. If the slickrock in the Basin is wet, turn around there without apology; the gravel slope above it becomes a slide.
Water. Three liters per person minimum, four in March. Nothing above the trailhead is drinkable.
Route finding and the wall. Above the Basin, follow the white dots. About 500 feet below the saddle the route forks; stay left. The right-hand line is steeper, slipperier and the source of a lot of the rescues. At the wall, the right side with the protruding steps is the easy way up and the harder way down, so note how you climbed it; the crack on the left is more exposed. Gloves help on the rhyolite, and sticky rubber beats worn trail runners. See scramble and class ratings if class 2 and class 3 are new terms.
Dogs. Allowed on leash, and plenty reach the Basin. Above it the rock is hot, the slope loose and the wall a lift; most dogs should turn around in the Basin.
Skip the top if the Basin took you more than an hour and a half; that is your summit for the day. Most Flatiron injuries happen on the way down, when legs are tired and the gravel is loose. The Peralta Trail to Fremont Saddle delivers a comparable view of Weavers Needle on an actual trail, and Picketpost Mountain near Superior is the other summit scramble in the range for people who want a second one.
A mine road into a mountain the state almost could not afford
The west face of Superstition Mountain was a landmark long before it was a hike. The range sits at the edge of Pima country and later Apache range, and some Apache hold that an entrance to the lower world lies in it, that the winds blowing out of it raise the dust storms over the Valley. The Anglo story attached to it is a gold story. Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant who had probably taken his gold from the Vulture Mine where he worked, died in Phoenix in 1891 after allegedly telling his landlady Julia Thomas where a mother lode lay in these mountains. No one has found it, which has not stopped anyone looking, and the Superstitions have carried the Lost Dutchman’s name since.
The mountain’s protection came in steps. The Forest Service set aside the Superstition Primitive Area in 1939; the Wilderness Act of 1964 made it the Superstition Wilderness, one of the original units; additions in 1984 brought it to about 160,000 acres and closed it to new mining claims. Siphon Draw was never wilderness all the way down. The lower draw was prospected like the rest of the range, and the trail you walk to the Basin follows an old access road up toward the Palmer Mine, one of the small claims worked in the lower canyon. The Flatiron’s name is descriptive, and nobody has recorded who first used it; Siphon Draw’s is said to be apt, for a canyon that drains the Basin in one pour after rain, though no source pins its origin either.
The park at the bottom is a creature of the 1970s. The Bureau of Land Management developed the base of the mountain as a day-use area in 1972, then transferred 292 acres to the state on September 13, 1977, creating Lost Dutchman State Park; a 28-acre lease in 1983 brought it to 320 acres. The Siphon Draw trailhead sits at its southwest corner, and the park’s lot, water and restroom are the reason the Flatiron is a day hike instead of a bushwhack from the highway. Eight-tenths of a mile up, the trail leaves the park for the Tonto National Forest and the wilderness, which is why the park’s rules apply at the bottom and the Forest Service’s above.
The park nearly closed. In 2010, in the state’s budget crisis, Lost Dutchman was one of 13 Arizona state parks scheduled for closure. All 13 stayed open, carried by local governments, volunteers and donations, among them $8,000 from a Texas visitor named Taylor Sanford on June 3, 2010, after he read the park was shutting; Apache Junction’s support for its one state park was part of the rescue. The episode is the reason the fee structure is what it is and the reason the park stopped letting cars drop hikers at the gate for free.
What has changed since is the crowd. The Flatiron went from a climbers’ and scramblers’ outing to the Valley’s best-known hard hike in the social-media decade, the lot filled by 8 a.m. on winter weekends, and the Pinal County sheriff’s rescue teams learned the right-hand fork and the wall by heart. The park’s response has been signage, an honest trail page that says five hours and experienced hikers only, and a gate that locks at 8.
Why it matters
The Flatiron explains the Superstitions better than the legend does: a mountain that was protected early, mined at its edges, turned into a state park at its foot by a federal land transfer, nearly lost to a budget, and then discovered all at once by a Valley that had run out of harder hikes. It also explains the gap between a trail and a route, which is the one lesson every Scottsdale hiker eventually learns somewhere, and this is a good place to learn it with a restroom at the bottom. The verdict for a visitor: do Camelback first, do this one in winter with a 7 a.m. start and three liters, stay left at the fork, and let the Basin be the summit on any day it needs to be.