Camelback Mountain's Two Trailheads Are Both Open Again, and This Time the City Told You When

How long has it actually been since you could choose either side of Camelback Mountain on a given morning, walk up to whichever gate looked less crowded, and start hiking without checking a closure notice first? For most of this year, that choice hasn't existed. One trailhead or the other has been fenced, gated, or under a boulder-stabilization crew's supervision more often than residents who treat this mountain as a daily fixture would probably guess.

As of this week, the Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department's own trail page shows nothing active on either trailhead. Echo Canyon and Cholla are both open at the same time, which hasn't been true since last October. That's less a return to normal than it sounds. It's the end of a stretch that included one closure nobody could put a date on and two more that the city scheduled months in advance, back to back, on a single mountain that residents on both the Phoenix and Paradise Valley sides of it use every week.

The closure with no end date

Last October, a storm hit Camelback hard enough to erode sections of Echo Canyon Trail and leave three boulders loose enough that the city called in geotechnical engineers before saying anything about a reopening. The Parks and Recreation Department closed the trail in mid-October with no return date attached, which meant anyone who hikes Echo Canyon on a schedule was checking the city's trail page morning after morning with nothing to go on.

The fix took weeks. Crews spent late November and early December coring holes into each boulder and injecting expanding grout, a process designed to let the boulders separate safely instead of shifting on their own. The trail reopened at sunrise on December 14, roughly two months after it closed. Parks and Recreation Department Director Cynthia Aguilar said at the time that the trail is "one of our most popular and challenging trails," which is part of why a two-month unknown felt different here than it would on a less-used route. During that stretch, Cholla carried the entire load of Camelback's foot traffic, and hikers who preferred Echo Canyon simply didn't have the option.

This summer, the city tried something different

Eight months later, Camelback closed again, twice, and this time both dates were posted before either closure started.

Cholla Trail closed August 17 through August 28 so Phoenix Water Services could replace a sewer line along Cholla Lane, part of what the city calls the Cholla Sewer Diversion and Abandonment Project. It's underground work that never touched the hiking surface itself. Once that closure lifted, Echo Canyon closed September 2 through September 18 for a different reason: new automatic gates and trail posts at the trailhead and along the route, physical infrastructure rather than emergency repair.

The sequencing left almost no overlap. Cholla reopened August 28. Echo Canyon didn't close until September 2, which gave hikers exactly four days, August 29 through September 1, where both trailheads were open at once. Outside that window, Camelback ran on a single trail for five straight weeks, just split across two different closures instead of one long one.

The difference between October's closure and this one isn't really about how long either lasted. It's that residents knew the September dates in July. Nobody was refreshing a city webpage hoping for news. A mountain that gets this much foot traffic will need periodic work, and a calendar posted weeks ahead gives hikers room to plan their routes around it.

What that actually means if you're heading up this week

Both trails are open right now, and neither has a posted closure that would change that in the near term. A few details worth knowing if it's been a while since you've had the full choice back:

• Cholla Trail, off Invergordon Road, is rated Extremely Difficult by the city despite being marketed as the gentler alternative. It's fully exposed with almost no shade, and the upper third gets steep enough that the city's own trail notes recommend less experienced hikers turn around at the small rest area in the saddle before the boulder field.
• Echo Canyon Trail, off McDonald Drive near Tatum Boulevard, carries the same Extremely Difficult rating and is generally considered the more technical of the two. Its parking lot fills by late morning on weekdays during peak season and stays full most of the day on weekends. The city does not allow idling on McDonald Drive or Tatum Boulevard while waiting for a spot to open, and police will ticket and tow.
• Bobby's Rock Trail, the short loop around a cube-shaped sandstone formation that passes a helipad, is only reachable from the Echo Canyon Trailhead. It was closed during September's work and is open again along with the main trail.
• Dogs aren't permitted on either Camelback trail, a rule that doesn't change regardless of which trailhead is open.
• If you picked up the habit of hiking Piestewa Peak's Summit Trail after dark this summer, the extended hours end soon. The gate at 2701 E. Piestewa Peak Drive has been staying open until 9 p.m. instead of the usual 7 p.m., but that runs only through September 30.

The new stop at the bottom of the east side

The one genuinely new thing on this side of the mountain isn't a trail change at all. The property on Scottsdale Road that longtime residents knew as the Scottsdale Plaza Resort reopened in January as Kimpton Miralina Resort & Villas, following a $42 million reimagining of the original 42-acre site. The resort's signature restaurant, Hecho Libre, actually opened a few weeks earlier, in early December, serving Baja and Sonoran-influenced food from chef Wes Avila, a Los Angeles chef with James Beard and Michelin Guide recognition.

That matters for anyone finishing a Cholla-side hike who used to have nowhere obvious to land afterward. The old Scottsdale Plaza Resort wasn't the kind of place you'd casually walk into in hiking clothes. Miralina's build-out is still going. A Japanese restaurant called Katsuya, led by sbe culinary director Benjamin Dayag, is slated to open in early 2027 as part of what the property describes as a larger, ongoing transformation, and additional villas and residences are expected later this year. The mountain's east side has a legitimate new option now, with more coming.

Camelback spent close to a third of the past year with one trailhead or the other unavailable. Right now, for the first time since last October, neither one is.

Curious what a home near this stretch of trail is actually worth in today's market, or thinking about what it takes to buy or sell close to Camelback Mountain? Sue Shapiro can walk you through it. Let's Connect.