We awoke early on our first morning in Scottsdale, intent on getting to the trailhead at 5:30am for a sunrise hike up Camelback Mountain – the summit is accessible from two trailheads, and we had read that parking at both can be a nightmare, even on weekdays. As we sat with our morning coffee, we decided that such a popular hike was not what we were really after today, so we looked at several other options, settling on a hike up Piestewa Peak, another prominent feature of the Phoenix skyline just west of Camelback. Known historically as Squaw Peak, the summit was renamed in 2003 for Lori Piestewa, a young US Army soldier who lost her life in Iraq, the first female Native American service member killed in action. The peak is the high point of Phoenix Mountains Park, an open space preserve surrounded by residential communities and accessed via a service road lined with picnic facilities and various trailheads. After what became a more leisurely start to the day, we arrived at the appointed TH about 7:30am, shortly following a sparse but steady stream of hikers up the steep trail – we expected to make the 1-mile, 1,100′ ascent up to the summit before descending about halfway down, then following a loop trail clockwise around the mountain and back to the car for a total of about 4.5 miles. We followed the stair-stepped trail (are there any AZ trails not built with steps?) westward up to an initial saddle, then north and east up a ridge. The trail is clearly a popular one and, being that it doesn’t require the scrambling of Camelback Mountain, attracts a large number of fitness folks who likely do this as a regular routine – we were two of just a handful of hikers with trekking poles and large water reservoirs, most carrying very light loads if any at all, and some didn’t even carry water this cool, overcast morning. We made our way steadily northward along the ridge, past several false summits before reaching the final incline to the top, one of the steepest stretches of the day. The summit turned out to be a split one, the eastern of the two higher by maybe 8 feet. Chris decided to scramble up to the true summit block, a hand-and-knees affair on the north side – not halfway up, his thigh knocked his small camera lens in its case right off his belt, and he watched helplessly as it bounced some 50′ down the rocks, unable to see its final resting place from where he was. A little lower down, Jane said she could see it, and so she scrambled down the steep slope to retrieve it while Chris continued up to the top – such the helpful wife. Though a cloudy day, the views from both summits were great – we soaked them in for a few minutes before starting back down the trail, made just as slow as our ascent by increasing numbers of hikers making their way up (some of the runners both up and down were rudely annoying in their quest for a speedy pace – the trail was just too crowded to expect that kind of consideration). We soon found the saddle at which we turned west on the loop trail – we’d not studied the route very intently in advance, and we were surprised to lose 400′ of elevation in about a dozen switchbacks down to the base of the mountain’s western slope, there turning north. We slowly began to regain what we’d just lost, ascending gradually north and east up a narrowing box canyon – the further up we went, the more saguaros we encountered, the first exposure we’ve had to these remarkable plants. As we neared the upper end of the canyon, we spied a pass to the north that seemed like our natural exit point to continue the loop – wrong, as we suddenly found ourselves turning south and east to gain another 200′ up to a higher pass. Cresting Piestewa Peak’s north shoulder, we dropped eastward into a shallow valley before turning south through a low saddle and back into the main valley. Reaching a trailhead at the end of the access road, we decided to forego another half mile of rocky trail and instead walked down the pavement back to the car. At 4.69 miles, this hike had just the right amount of distance for us, but our pace over its length was exceedingly slow – 3,200′ of combined elevation change had something to do with that, but the biggest factor was simply our tired legs. Although we had another 15 miles of hikes planned in the area, Piestewa Peak ended up being the last of our trip – we spent the rest of our Scottsdale stay getting a little refined culture (visiting both the Phoenix Art Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West) and doing a lot of lounging around. Still, our Arizona tour netted us 40+ miles of great scenery and good times – until our next excursion…