Sunrise Peak in the McDowell Mountain Sonoran Preserve has awesome views of Scottsdale and Fountain hills at the top. It’s a nice change up from much busier hikes in the McDowells like Tom’s Thumb and is still a great workout with great scenery.
The end of last year was a bit of a whirlwind for us – we sold our first home, bought a new one, and have been slowly been making a few updates to it. With moving and work, naturally the blog took a bit of a backseat. It sucked since we’re still behind on posting about last year’s adventures! We’ve settled in a bit and have been our curing cabin fever with a quick trip to Sedona and some hikes in the new ‘hood.
This isn’t the first time we’ve hiked Sunset Peak; in fact these photos are actually from the first time before we started the blog. But now that the trailhead is closer, we think this will replace Black Mountain as our quick outdoor leg burner workout.
Scenery-wise, we prefer the big boulders of Tom’s Thumb, but Sunset Peak definitely beat’s The Thumb in terms of crowds. It’s not deserted since the trailhead is in a neighborhood, but it receives quite a bit less traffic on a weekend morning.
There are a few ways to reach the top of Sunset Peak, but we usually start from Sunset Trailhead. This trailhead has a very small main parking lot, but there’s also overflow parking farther down the road prior to reaching the main lot.
The trail gradually winds up into a small valley filled with lots of Saguaro and cholla cacti. The total elevation gain of the hike is just over 1000 ft – just enough to make this a good workout hike and not just another walk in the desert.
At the second saddle there’s a sign warning you about the ruggedness of the rest of the trail up to the peak. While trail is more narrow and has more loose rocks than the trail to this point, it’s really not that bad and the view is well worth a bit of scrambling!
