Dog-Friendly Hike in Phoenix

I took the puppers out for a short after work hike in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. We did the Quartz Ridge Trail (#8a) – it was a pretty easy 3.2 mile out & back hike. There was a good-sized parking lot at the trailhead and the trail was easy to find, lots of great signage at the start and throughout the hike to keep you on track. It was a very rocky trail but my boys didn’t have any trouble with it. Most of the trail was pretty wide so it was easy to keep them from poking themselves in the face with cacti. One part of the trail gets tighter and climbs up a ridge, again we were fine but I might skip it if you have dogs and kids with you.

What was really nice is you get great views pretty quickly into the hike without a lot of painful elevation gain. This was the view from pretty close in, before much elevation gain at all:

About half-way up the little “cliff”:

And at the top:

One suggestion I have is to hike to the top and then go back. The trail continues from the top down the other side into another little valley. Here the trail gets much tighter and doesn’t really offer much (anything after the view is going to be disappointing in comparison!). I did, however, see this gigantic sauguro cactus on that part of the trail:

I wish I had something for scale, the picture doesn’t really do it justice. This thing was MASSIVE. At least three times taller than I am (and I’m 5’8).

All in all it was a nice little trail to do after work with the dogs. I went by myself and never felt unsafe, there were a lot of other women by themselves on the trail and people with dogs.