If you have tried to hike Camelback Mountain in the last two weeks, you already know something changed. Cholla Trail, the longer approach off Invergordon Road, just came back after closing for the back half of August. Echo Canyon, the trail most people default to when Cholla is out of the rotation, closes for its own construction window starting September 2. For a stretch of roughly five weeks this late summer and early fall, Phoenix's most climbed mountain is never fully open and never fully shut. Exactly one trail is always available, and that is not an accident of scheduling. It is the plan.
The City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department has now confirmed both windows on its official Camelback Mountain trails page, and the pattern is worth understanding if you live anywhere near either trailhead, because this mountain has a habit of losing a trail for reasons that have nothing to do with each other.
The Calendar Nobody Posts Together
Here is what is actually happening, laid out side by side:
| Trail | Closure Window | Where to Go Instead |
|---|---|---|
| Cholla Trail | August 17 to August 28, 2026 | Echo Canyon Trailhead, 4925 E. McDonald Dr. |
| Echo Canyon Trail | September 2 to September 18, 2026 | Cholla Trailhead, 5150 N. Invergordon Rd. |
Cholla's closure was tied to the Cholla Sewer Diversion and Abandonment Project. Phoenix Water Services crews spent that window installing a new sewer line north of the trailhead and east of Invergordon Road, then began decommissioning an older line in the easement south of Cholla Lane rather than leaving two lines in service underneath a hiking trail. Residents along Cholla Lane kept access to their homes during the work, though the city warned of intermittent delays.
Echo Canyon's turn is different in scope. The parks department describes the September closure as installing new automatic gates and trail posts, the kind of upgrade you would expect at a trailhead that already has to manually shut its entry gate when the parking lot fills, which happens most weekday late mornings and all day on weekends during the cooler months. An automated gate does not fix crowding. It just means a ranger no longer has to walk out and close it by hand.
Why This Time Is Different
Neither of these closures would have surprised a longtime Camelback hiker five years ago. What is new is that both came with a start date and an end date attached before the work began.
That has not always been true of this mountain. Cholla Trail closed in March 2020 after a 300 pound boulder rolled onto a hiker's legs, and firefighters needed specialized equipment to free him before he was taken to a hospital with serious leg injuries. The trail stayed shut for more than two years while the city worked through a plan to relocate the trailhead entirely, moving it off Cholla Lane and onto Invergordon Road after pushback from homeowners on nearby Vista Drive who worried the reroute would send hikers past their backyards instead of a block over. For most of that closure, Parks and Recreation spokesperson Gregg Bach would not commit to a timeline, telling reporters only that no reopening date had been determined. The trail finally reopened on September 30, 2022, with a relocated trailhead, a drinking fountain, restrooms, and bike racks that had not existed before.
Echo Canyon has had its own version of this. Storms in mid-October 2025 caused erosion severe enough to expose three loose boulders along the trail, and the city closed it with no return date given, calling in geotechnical and civil engineers to design a fix that involved drilling into each boulder and injecting expanding grout so the rock could be safely separated. Work ran from the week of November 24 through the week of December 8. The trail reopened December 14, 2025.
"We appreciate the community's patience while our teams completed this critical safety work."
That line came from Parks and Recreation Department Director Cynthia Aguilar when Echo Canyon reopened last December, and it is the same tone every closure notice on this mountain has carried for six years: patience requested, timeline uncertain, reopening announced only once the work was actually finished.
This summer's closures broke that pattern. Both dates were published in advance. Both closures are for planned infrastructure, not emergency repair. If you have lived near this mountain since before 2020, this is the first time Camelback has told you when a trail would come back before it went away.
If You Live Near Either Trailhead
A few things are worth knowing regardless of which trail reopens first.
- Dogs are prohibited on both Cholla Trail and Echo Canyon Trail year round, not just during peak season.
- Parking near the Echo Canyon Trailhead on McDonald Drive or Tatum Boulevard is enforced closely. Idling to wait for a spot draws a ticket, and illegally parked vehicles get towed.
- Cholla is the longer, more exposed route, with almost no shade and a final third that gets steep and hard to follow. Echo Canyon is shorter but steeper from the start, with sections that require using your hands and, at points, handrails.
- If a full summit push is not what you are after this week, Bobby's Rock Trail branches off Echo Canyon Trail near the trailhead and loops around a large sandstone formation without requiring the climb to the top.
- Both trailheads sit close enough to Paradise Valley and Scottsdale that residents of all three cross over regularly, so a closure on one side of the mountain tends to push extra traffic across municipal lines, not just across the parking lot.
None of this makes Camelback Mountain unusual among Phoenix's trail system. What makes it worth tracking is how rarely both trails have been simultaneously normal since 2020. A boulder took one down for two years. A monsoon took the other down for two months. Now the city is closing them on purpose, one at a time, with dates attached, which is either a small bureaucratic improvement or the first sign that Phoenix is managing this mountain differently than it used to. Either way, if you hike this trail or live within earshot of one of its trailheads, the closure calendar is no longer background noise. It is the most reliable way to know which side of the mountain will actually be open the week you plan to go.
Camelback shapes daily life for a wide radius of homes in Phoenix, Paradise Valley, and Scottsdale, and knowing how this mountain actually behaves, not just how it looks from a listing photo, is the kind of local detail that matters when you are deciding where to put down roots near it. If you are weighing a move near Camelback or anywhere else in this part of the Valley, Kapanicas Group can walk you through what the neighborhood is really like day to day. Schedule a free market consultation whenever you are ready to talk specifics.
