What is the Wave Cave?
High on the south face of the Superstitions, under the cliffs that form the Superstition Ridgeline, there is a wide, shallow cave with a lip of pale rock inside it that curls over exactly like a wave about to break. Someone noticed it was a perfect photo about a decade ago and the Wave Cave has been the most-photographed hole in the range ever since. The hike to it is short and real: from the Carney Springs trail junction it is about 1.5 miles one way with roughly 800 feet of gain, two-thirds of it an easy climb across the bajada and the last third of a mile a steep, loose scramble up a slope of broken rock to the cave mouth. The view back takes in Gold Canyon, the San Tan Mountains and, on a clear day, the Santa Catalinas above Tucson.
Two other things hang off the same trail. The Shaka Cave is a smaller cave about 1.2 miles from the junction on an unofficial spur, with roughly 450 feet of gain, named for the hand-shaped shadow you can throw inside it. Carney Springs Waterfall, about 230 feet tall, pours off the cliffs a third of a mile past the Shaka Cave for a day or two after heavy, prolonged rain, and when it is running it is the best waterfall in the East Valley. The rest of the year it is a stain on the rock.
Since parking at Carney Springs itself is no longer allowed, the legal start at the Lost Goldmine East Trailhead makes the round trip about 5 miles. What you get is a free, half-day hike with a genuinely strange finish. What you do not get is a toilet, water, shade, signs or solitude on a winter weekend.
How to hike the Wave Cave right
Park legally, pay nothing. There is no fee and no Tonto Pass at the Lost Goldmine East Trailhead, a signed Pinal County lot on Peralta Road. The old Carney Springs trailhead another mile up, marked by yellow chains, is on State Trust land and now requires an Arizona State Land Department recreation permit; cars on the shoulder of Peralta Road get ticketed.
Get there. Loop 101 south, US 60 east past Apache Junction and Gold Canyon, then left on Peralta Road (Forest Road 77) about 8.5 miles past Apache Junction. The pavement ends after the ranchettes and the rest is graded dirt with washboard. About 6.5 miles in, the Lost Goldmine East lot is on the left. About 65 minutes from Old Town.
Find the route. From the lot, walk the Lost Goldmine Trail west about a mile along the wilderness fence to the Carney Springs junction. That first mile is flat and dull, so set expectations. Go through the walk-through gap in the fence and turn left at the next fork; right goes up to Carney Saddle. The route is unsigned past the junction but well worn.
Beat the line. Go on a weekday or be on the trail by 7 on a weekend. The cave holds maybe 20 people comfortably, and on a Saturday at 10 there is a line for the photo on the wave. Most people take two to three hours round trip from the lot.
Pick the season. November through March is the window; October and April are first-light only. The slope faces south and holds heat, and the last pitch in sun is miserable by mid-April. The summer rules apply early here. If Peralta Road has water running across it in several places, the waterfall is going, and that, not the cave, is the hike to do that day.
Respect the last pitch. Loose rock on a steep slope, and more people get hurt coming down than going up; see the scramble ratings for what that means. Poles help, and so does not wearing the shoes you wear to brunch. On the wave itself the rock is smooth and the drop behind it is short: no carving, no graffiti, no fires in the cave.
Water and dogs. No toilets or water at the lot or on the trail; Peralta Trailhead, 1.5 miles farther up the road, has vault toilets and no water. Carry at least two liters per person. Dogs are allowed on leash; the scree pitch is hard on paws and the cave gets crowded.
Skip it if the group includes small kids or anyone shaky on loose rock: the Hieroglyphic Trail a few miles west has petroglyphs and pools without a scramble, and Wind Cave at Usery is a cave with a built trail to it.
A trail built to get around the subdivisions
The Superstitions were somebody’s mountains long before they were anybody’s backdrop. The Yavapai call the range Wi:kchsawa, and Apache tradition places an opening to the lower world somewhere inside it, the source of the winds that bring dust storms. Both peoples lived, hunted and gathered along this south face until the Army’s campaigns of the 1860s and 1870s pushed them onto reservations, and the Hohokam farmers of the Salt River valley knew these cliffs before them.
The Anglo story is mostly gold that nobody found. Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant who had worked at the Vulture Mine, died in Phoenix in 1891 after supposedly describing a rich mine in the Superstitions to the woman who ran his boarding house. No one has ever verified it, but the Lost Dutchman legend named the state park on the west end of the range, and the Peralta legend that grew alongside it named the road you drive to this hike. In 1939 the Forest Service set the range aside as the Superstition Wilderness, now about 160,000 acres, which is why the Carney Springs Trail starts at a fence and why no road goes farther than Peralta.
The foothills outside that fence were another matter. For decades hikers and riders reached the south face across open State Trust land on informal routes. In the early 1990s the subdivisions of Gold Canyon and Apache Junction began cutting those routes off, and in 1993 Pinal County asked the Superstition Area Land Trust to help build a permanent trail. It took ten years, volunteer labor from SALT, the Superstition Horsemen’s Association and homeowner groups, and about $350,000 to lease the right-of-way from the Arizona State Land Department. The Lost Goldmine Trail opened in 2002, roughly eleven miles along the base of the mountains from the state park to the Peralta area, with state grants paying for the trailheads and lots. The mile you walk from the Lost Goldmine East lot to the Carney Springs junction is that trail.
Then the cave went viral. Through the 2010s the photo of a hiker standing on the curl turned an obscure spur into a weekend queue, and the informal pullout at Carney Springs, on State Trust land, could not hold the cars. The state first required its recreation permit to park there and then stopped allowing parking at all, and cars on the road shoulder now get ticketed. The result is the hike as it stands: the Wave Cave approach now starts on a trail that was built to give the public a way around private land, and it added two miles to what used to be a three-mile hike.
Why it matters
The Wave Cave is a small lesson in how the Valley’s edge works. The rock is in a 1939 wilderness that will not change; the approach is on State Trust land that the state manages for money, not hikers; and the public’s access depends on a trail that a land trust and a county spent a decade leasing. Instagram did the rest. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is plain: worth it on a cool weekday morning for the strangest rock formation in the range, not worth it on a February Saturday at 10. Park at Lost Goldmine East, take the first mile on faith, and save it for after a big rain if you want the waterfall too.