Trail Season & Rules Checker
Popular Phoenix preserve trails with their season guidance and the city rules that apply, each linked to the official page it came from and dated.
Which park
The day, gathered
- Sunrise
- 6:46 AM
- Sunset
- 5:37 PM
- Normal high
- 83 °F
- Morning before the closure
- 1 h 14 min
Water
A litre of water per hour, and the same page says the need rises dramatically above 85 °F.
Yuma County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue, "Desert Safety"
Yuma County, not Maricopa. It is the only agency page this site could open that puts a number on hiking water, and it is named as what it is rather than presented as a Phoenix figure.
Camelback Mountain Preserve
Restricted 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
On a day when the National Weather Service issues an Extreme Heat Warning, 2 named segments here are closed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. This tool cannot know whether a warning has been issued: that is a live forecast. Sunrise on this date is 6:46 AM, and the closure starts at 8 a.m., so that leaves about 1 hour and 14 minutes between sunrise and the closure. The normal high for the date is 83 °F.
Where the closure sits in the day
Sunrise and sunset from NOAA’s published solar equations at Phoenix’s coordinates, on the date you picked. The restriction band is the city’s 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. window and applies when the National Weather Service has issued an Extreme Heat Warning. The tool cannot know whether one is in force.
What the rule names here
- Echo Canyon Trail
- Cholla Trail
The city page this site read does not state which segments stay open at this park. Check the official page before you rely on a gate.
Trailhead and trail hours for this park were not on the page this site could read.
The two routes to the summit, and the busiest hike in the city. The city does not publish trailhead gate hours for Camelback on the page this site could read.
Closure days and hot days, 2024
The city closed trails on far fewer days than the thermometer went past 105 °F. The closures track the heat warnings, and the warnings track the HeatRisk forecast rather than a fixed temperature.
City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation, Trail Heat Safety Program, “Results by the Numbers”, from May 1 to October 13 2024.
The rule has changed twice since 2021
- 2021 The Parks and Recreation Board establishes the Trail Heat Safety Program.
- 25 October 2024 The Board expands the restriction to all South Mountain trails and moves the closure one hour earlier, to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- 27 March 2025 The Board narrows the list to the segments in force today: the four named South Mountain segments, Echo Canyon and Cholla, and Piestewa Peak.
From the city’s own page. If the version of this rule you have heard predates March 2025, it is probably the wider one.
Rescues from closed trails
More than 200 hikers annually are rescued from City of Phoenix desert and mountain parks and preserves, in the city’s own words.
The city’s own checklist
- Watch the weather. The city’s wording is worth keeping: "Yes, 'it's a dry heat' — but Arizona's temperature can be deceiving and deadly. Hike when it's cool outside. Try early mornings and evenings."
- Bring water. Hydrate before you go. Have plenty of water, more than you think you need. Turn around and head back to the trailhead before you drink all of your water.
- Dress appropriately. In the city’s checklist, without further qualification.
- Keep in contact. In the city’s checklist, without further qualification.
- Team up. In the city’s checklist, without further qualification.
- Be honest. In the city’s checklist. The line that does the work is the one about turning around before the water runs out.
- Don’t trailblaze. In the city’s checklist, without further qualification.
- Take responsibility. In the city’s checklist, without further qualification.
This is a closure, not a recommendation
Most heat guidance for hikers is advice. This is not. On a day when the National Weather Service issues an Extreme Heat Warning, the City of Phoenix restricts a named list of trail segments from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and rangers close the gates at the trailheads. The program has been running since 2021 and it has been changed twice since: widened in October 2024 and narrowed again in March 2025.
The narrowing matters, because it is the version people are most likely to be carrying around incorrectly. Between October 2024 and March 2025 every trail at South Mountain was subject to the restriction. Today four named segments are. If you read about this rule during the winter of 2024–25, the version you have is out of date in the direction of being too restrictive.
What the closure actually covers
Four groups, and the list is short enough to memorise:
- Camelback Mountain Preserve: the Echo Canyon Trail and the Cholla Trail. The two routes to the summit.
- Phoenix Mountains Preserve: the Piestewa Peak Summit Trail and the trails associated with it.
- South Mountain Park and Preserve: the Holbert Trail at 2.56 miles, the Mormon Trail at 1.35 miles, the Hau‘pal Loop at 2.8 miles, and access to the National Trail from the Pima Canyon Trailhead.
- Papago Park: not on the list. It has no heat closure at all.
The South Mountain entry is the one people get wrong in both directions. The park is enormous and the restriction is tiny: the city's own figures are more than 100 miles of trail accessible during a warning and fewer than 7 miles restricted. And the National Trail itself is not closed, only the approach to it from Pima Canyon. Reach it from any other trailhead and it is open.
Why the tool shows you a morning rather than an answer
The honest gap in this tool is that it cannot know whether a warning is in force. That is a live forecast; this site is a static build with no weather feed, and pretending otherwise would mean inventing a number.
What it can do is show the shape of the day, which turns out to be more useful than a yes-or-no. Set the date to a July morning and the bar shows sunrise at about 5:25, the closure band opening at 8 a.m., and roughly two and a half hours of legal morning in between. Set it to mid-December and the band still opens at 8 a.m., but sunrise is not until 7:24, thirty-six minutes of morning, inside a day whose normal high is 66 °F.
The gap between sunrise and 8 a.m. is the number the tool is really built around, and its shape is worth noticing: it peaks in June and July at around two hours and forty-five minutes, and shrinks to about half an hour in December. The window is widest in the months when the heat is worst, because the June sun rises before 5:30 and the December sun rises after 7:20. That is fortunate, and it is also short. Two and a half hours is the whole of it, and it is the only part of a Phoenix summer day when a hike on a restricted trail is both legal and defensible.
The hot days and the closed days are not the same days
The chart is worth a second look. In 2024 Phoenix had 121 days at or above 105 °F and 69 days above 110 °F, and the city closed trails on 45 days. If the rule were "close when it is over 105", the first number would match the third. It does not, and the reason is that the trigger is not a temperature.
NWS Phoenix issues heat alerts on the HeatRisk level, which folds in how unusual the heat is for the time of year, how long it lasts, and whether the nights provide relief. A 105 °F day in May triggers a warning because the population has not acclimated; the same 105 °F in July may not. That is why the closure count is closer to the extreme-heat count than to the merely-hot one, and why "it's only 105" is not a reason to assume the gate is open.
The water figure, and why it is labelled
The City of Phoenix's hiking checklist is good and gives no quantity of water. "Have plenty of water — more than you think you need" is the whole of it. When this site went looking for a number from a government source, the only one it could open was the Yuma County Sheriff's Office search-and-rescue page: a litre of water per hour, with the need rising dramatically above 85 °F.
Yuma County is not Maricopa County and the number is labelled with its origin rather than dressed up as a Phoenix figure. It is still the most useful water guidance available from an agency, and it sits next to the city's own advice about turning around before the water runs out, which, on a two-hour summer window, is the rule that actually keeps people out of trouble.
What the rescue numbers mean
The city publishes how many people were rescued from trails that were closed at the time: 57 in 2021, 47 in 2022, 30 in 2023, 35 in 2024. Read alongside the figure of more than 200 rescues a year from Phoenix desert and mountain parks, the closed-trail count is a small share of a large number.
The trend is downward and that is genuinely good news, though the city does not attribute it to anything in particular and neither does this page. What the numbers do establish is that the closure is not self-enforcing, and that a person who decides to go anyway is not making a novel decision. They are joining a few dozen people a year who needed rescuing.
- City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation: Trail Heat Safety Program
The restricted segments and their 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours, what the restriction leaves open at South Mountain, the program’s history, and the city’s own 2024 figures for closure days and rescues.
- City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation: "Take a Hike. Do it Right."
The eight-item hiking checklist, in the city’s wording.
- Yuma County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue: "Desert Safety"
The litre-per-hour water figure: Yuma County, not Maricopa, and named as such on the page rather than presented as a Phoenix number.
- NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory: Solar Calculator and its published solar equations
Sunrise, sunset and solar noon for Phoenix on the date you pick, computed with NOAA’s published solar equations at Phoenix’s latitude and longitude.
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information: U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, daily summaries, Phoenix Sky Harbor (USW00023183)
The normal high for the date, so the tool can say what the afternoon is normally like on the day you are planning.
Every figure this tool uses was read from the source named above on 10 October 2026. Anything still waiting on a check is listed in the site's data notes rather than shown here as if it were settled.
Before you rely on this
This tool works from climate normals and published guidance, not from live weather. It describes a typical day for the month or date you chose, which is useful for planning and useless as a forecast.
- The tool cannot tell you whether an Extreme Heat Warning has been issued. That is a live forecast and this site is a static build with no weather feed. What the tool shows is the rule that applies if a warning is issued. Check the National Weather Service before you go.
- The closure applies to the named segments and not to the park. South Mountain keeps more than a hundred miles of trail open during a warning, and the National Trail is closed only when you reach it from the Pima Canyon Trailhead. This tool lists the segments; the city’s page is the authority on which gate you are standing at.
- Trailhead and trail hours differ. Where the city publishes both they are both shown, because a 7 p.m. trailhead gate with 11 p.m. trail hours is not a mistake. It means you can be on the trail after the parking lot closes, which is worth knowing before you plan a sunset hike.
- Camelback’s gate hours were not on the city page this site could read, so the entry says so rather than showing a plausible number. Check the city page for Camelback before relying on an hour.
- The normal high is a thirty-year average for the date, not a forecast. It tells you what the afternoon is usually like; it does not tell you what tomorrow will be.
- The water figure is Yuma County’s, not Phoenix’s. The City of Phoenix page says to bring more water than you think you need and gives no quantity, and this site has not found a Maricopa County figure either. The litre-per-hour number is labelled with where it comes from.
- Nothing here is safety advice for a specific hike. Distance, elevation, exposure, your own fitness and the company you are with are all outside what this tool knows.