The White Tank Mountains are a well-known visible landmark in the Phoenix region, rising out of the desert flats on the far western horizon, and serving as the natural physical boundary of the greater metropolitan Phoenix area. Suburban sprawl steadily encroaches onto the eastern foothills of the range, while on its western flanks, the land is mostly virgin desert. Most of the sprawling mountain range is encompassed into a county-run park called the White Tank Mountain Regional Park, with numerous hiking, biking and horse trails, camping areas, and a number of ramadas and picnic tables for the day visitors. It is an extremely popular park, and it is not uncommon for every single parking space to be filled on a pleasant winter weekend afternoon. I moved to Phoenix in the summer of 1992 and made my first visit to the park that autumn, when the weather had finally moderated, and hiked a few of the trails, mainly out of curiosity. Since then, I have only visited the park a handful of times, some for pleasure and a few times on search and rescue missions as a member of the Sheriff's Mountain Rescue team. In fact, until this hike, I had not set foot within the park boundaries since the summer of 2002. Considering I live within an hour's drive, that's not a good percentage!

I became interested in seeking out this range's highest point when I started ticking off the highest prominence peaks in the state. For whatever reason, the summit of this range isn't a highly sought place to visit, and I could find very little information on a summit hike - whether in book form or from the internet. For a range so close to Phoenix it seemed plausible someone had been to the top and written about it, but I was apparently mistaken! While it is a large range in area, covering a region roughly 10 miles across by 20 miles long, the range's summit rises to just 4,083 feet and is not very obvious from below. From most vantage points the summit appears to be a broad blocky peak carpeted in numerous communications towers, but this false peak rises about 100 feet less than the tru highpoint. The true summit is a pointed peak that sits to the northwest, visible from below, but not obvious that it is in fact the highest point. The White Tank Mountains Park does not have a trail to the top, and they discourage people from 'visiting the towers' with mild threats that it is patrolled by law enforcement. So for those two reasons, the highpoint seems to be off of most people's radar. The real draw of the White Tank Mountains is not necessarily the highpoint, but lower down in its foothills and canyons, which are full of springs, creeks, waterfalls when it's been raining, and natural depressions in the stone called tinajas - Spanish for tanks - which hold water often well into the hot summer months. The ancient Hohokam Indians encamped in the foothills up until about 1100 A.D., and numerous petroglyphs can be found attesting to their long-ago presence.

Even so, I wanted the highpoint, and I was uncertain how to go about getting to the top, barring an unattractive bushwhack through grasses, rocks and cactus. The USGS quadrangle maps for the range date from 1957, last revised in 1971, and were not much help in identifying hiking trails. It did show some jeep roads, including one that runs north-south down the spine of the range and passes right below the highpoint. But I had no idea how to get to these jeep roads. I did drive out to the south end of the range near Interstate-10 at Verrado Road one day to scout routes, but the massive new Verrado housing development has closed access - so far as I could tell - to these roads. I looked over some maps for a possible northern approach with no luck. Coming in from the east via the Park seemed like the best remaining option, but I was concerned about the bushwhacking. For this hike, I was joined by Pete Bengtson from Tucson. We agreed to meet up early on the morning of the hike just outside the park boundaries, and all went well. We drove in and found the parking area nearest the Mesquite Canyon trailhead. By 7:30 a.m. we were ready to go, and into the hinterlands we went!

From the parking area we walked a bit past the informational sign to the Mesquite Trail, which goes left. Very quickly it enters into a canyon and makes a few switchbacks up the hillsides; before we knew it we were a couple hundred feet above our cars! The trail then crosses a drainage at a 'Trail Closed' sign (referring to some other trail, I guess). From here it climbs up and over a ridge, then down the other side slightly, trending generally west. Here, we had the first glimpse of the pointed summit way off on the highest ridge. The trail in this part was pretty level and even dropped a bit here and there. At 1.8 miles (sez the signs), we came to the Willow Trail junction. We stayed straight and on the Mesquite Trail. The trail bends south, then west again, going up and down over a series of low hills and outcrops, then starts up a steep section that topped out on a small ridge, roughly 2.5 miles from the cars. Here, I stopped and let Pete catch up - he wasn't too far back. All the while a group of six was gaining on us, talking loudly. We all congregated on the top of this little ridge. The group of six continued down and away on the trail, while we got a bit antsy and figured we should leave the trail and start our cross-country segment.

This proved to be a bad idea. We left the trail and made our way up the slopes toward the prominent ridge that led to the top. Game paths helped in places but a lot of it was brushy, rocky stepping. We got to the ridge ... and saw a trail! The same Mesquite Trail we had been on. It wasn't our finest all-star navigation performance, that was for sure. Even so we had only lost maybe 20 minutes of actual time so we were still in good shape. The trail led to a junction with the Ford Canyon and Goat Camp trails, 3.2 miles from the trailhead (3.5ish by our route). We went left on the Goat Camp Trail for about a mile, a wonderfully well-maintained route high on the rounded ridges. Nice grasses and no rocky obstacles - this was a very enjoyable portion of the hike! The trail topped out on the ridge just west of a point marked as elevation 3,185 feet on the map, near a jeep track. I stopped here, had a bite and waited for Pete, about 5 minutes back. We rested a bit then started cross-country again.

Quickly we discovered the old jeep track, which was barely recognizable. It offered us a reasonably brush-free route, but all the while I was amazed that someone thought this a good place to put in a jeep track. The tracks were steep and often leaning out from the hillside, and not in. I can't imagine it's been driven in at least 40 years. For hiking purposes, it was just dandy. In less than a mile we had come upon the major dirt road that goes north-south through the range, and is obviously there for the tower workers. The road sees vehicles as we saw plenty of tracks, but on this day all was quiet. Frankly, I'm not sure how aggressively this area is patrolled and if it's even 'illegal' to be here. No signs say you can't, and the towers aren't any different than those found on other peaks that we've visited. We figured we'd proceed and see what happens; we weren't too concerned about getting into trouble. The only thing I could think of was that Luke Air Force Base had some sensitive locations up here. But if that was the case I doubt they'd put something up there without massive fencing and armed sentries guarding it all. Nope, it looked like boring old communications towers to me. Anyway, the walk up the remaining road went easy and fast, and we summitted at 11:30 in very pleasant, slightly breezy conditions. We took a 30-minute lunch break up top.

The views down were quite nice, barring those blocked by the towers. Looking west we had wide-open deserts, with Harquahala Mountain off to the northwest. To the east we could see the farms and suburbs of Phoenix, with the downtown buildings barely visible. The Sierra Estrella Range rose to our southeast. North and south we saw just more of the White Tank range, which was nice. We signed in the log, noting it was placed there in 1988 and still the booklet was only half-full. I'd say roughly 10-30 people climb the summit yearly, a rather low number given this peak's proximity to Phoenix. But then again, it's not a well-known obvious summit and the admonition to 'not visit the towers' in the park literature probably keeps a few people away. We recognized many of the names as fellow highpointer/prominence nuts.

The hike back went very efficiently, knowing now just to stay on the Mesquite Trail all the way back to our cars. We saw no one until we were back on the Mesquite Trail, and then only just a few people. As we got closer down much more people were hiking. I passed a lot going down, then almost back at the parking lot, a kind woman mentioned that I had a tear in my pants - my undies were showing for all to see! I had no idea. I wonder how many of those people I passed got a free show? Not that they saw much, except for my gray stinks, as my grandma called them. Slightly embarrassed (and bare assed, sort of), I walked out, changed into drier clothes, threw out the pants, and waited again for Pete. We had a good chat and shook hands, then went on our separate ways back to our respective homes. The hike out took me about 2 hours exactly. The total stats worked out to about 11 miles round trip and 2,400 feet of gain, all on trail, old road and new road ... plus or unintended off-route section. A nice hike, and one I am surprised I hadn't done before in my 14 years of living here.