Camelback Mountain Chuckwalla - the Sonoran Desert's Iguana

Hey, big fella. Enjoying the view?

This one's wife was joining him for an afternoon basking session.

Parking Problems

Camelback's in the news again, but this time not just for disaster, (though a 63-year-old hiker did die there last week.) The Arizona Republic says today that the parking situation is getting much worse.

Last July it became apparent that the mountain was getting more crowded in the summer. Things have changed since the shot I took of the parking lot in August three years ago -- now it's rare to see it this empty unless it's over 110.

I chatted with some rangers a couple of weeks ago who were directing traffic around the parking lot and back out -- no one is allowed to wait for a parking spot, they say. That began a month or two ago, although I waited in a typical line about three weeks ago; the rangers said that's cause they're not there all of the time. This time, they had signs out and didn't let anyone stop while all the spots were full. I asked if they had a limit on how many times you could go back in to check, and they said there wasn't any, but they made it more difficult by putting vehicles back onto McDonald before you could go back up Echo Canyon Drive.

I had biked up, an option the rangers appreciated. Parked the truck near the shopping center at 44th and Camelback Road.

The Arizona Republic article suggests that people could hike elsewhere. One commenter on the article states that people could simply walk around their neighborhoods, to which a smart-ass replied that he's too frightened to walk around his neighborhood because he doesn't own a gun.

Fact is, Camelback is unique. There is nothing like it. Piestewa comes close, and the parking lot is huge. But the trail is narrow and it doesn't have anywhere near the beauty of Camelback. It's like Wickenberg compared to Sedona. The trail on Camelback, often made up nothing but boulders, is way better than Piestewa. Beyond Piestewa and Camelback, no other standard mountain trail in the Phoenix area is as steep and long. Siphon Draw comes close, so does the hike to Tom's Thumb in the McD's, and Brown's Trail on Four Peaks. But who's got time for that?

Anyways, I hiked Camelback today. Tons of people. An absolute zoo.

I took three months off of running and hiking, from December to February, but have begun to get back on the mountain. Plantar fasiciitis. I think it's getting better.

I've been enjoying the spring on Camelback and have seen a few chuckwallas, including a baby. The chucks are clearly thriving despite the hordes of hikers. I shot this picture of a good-sized chuckwalla last week.

Camelback Chuckwalla

Late-spring hiking at Camelback this year has been different: Fewer parking spaces because of the great weather, less time to hike with the new closing hour of 7 p.m. (Jeez, they've gotta to change that!)

One thing is the same: The annual appearance of the friendly chuckwalla.

These handsome, large Sonoran-desert lizards come out when the ground heats up. Last month, On a recent day, I saw what looked like two baby chuckwallas. A couple of weeks later, I spotted this bad boy.






Don't try to catch one or you might hurt it. To escape predators, chuckwallas slip between cracks in the rock and puff up their bodies, wedging themselves in tight. This may work for coyotes (who may just get a drumstick instead of the whole thing) but determined humans would have no problem messing with them.

Seeing a chuckwalla at Camelback is a special treat for nerds like me and out-of-town visitors, some of whom probably wonder if they're Gila monsters. Chuckwallas are much bigger then common fence lizards, more colorful and all-around cooler-looking. They blend in beautifully with Camelback's orange-red hue.

Another neat thing about chuckwallas is their name. Though it sounds like something a hayseed from the Midwest might have thunk up, Wikipedia says it's derived from a Spanish bastardization of a couple of words for the lizard used by two Native American tribes.

The Hohokam, (the group of Native Americans who lived in the Phoenix area for about 1,000 years before leaving a few decades before Columbus' arrival) probably considered chuckwallas a delicious treat -- the Hohokam also ate cholla.

The Wiki article told me something I always suspected: that chuckwallas are basically desert iguanas. No wonder I like them so much: I used to have a pet iguana as a kid. Its name was Whiplash, because it liked to whip people with its tail so hard that it would leave a mark. It also bit me on the nose once. I sold it back to the pet shop I'd bought it from a year later, and found it had gone up in price like a rare coin. I was happy to have the extra money instead of the iguana. But I can't get those sweet little lizard faces out of my head. They're so cute!