TAKING THE OFF-RAMP

CLIMBING CAMEL BACK

A Gary Driggs talked incessantly as we climbed, while the exertion to keep up rendered me mute. We rock-hopped up a steep chute on the Echo Canyon Trail to the 2,704-foot summit of Camelback Mountain, Phoenix's most prominent landmark, and a place not without danger. From bottom to top measures about the height of a 110-story building, on trails that range from challenging to difficult. An estimated 300,000 people hike it each year. Those in good shape make the climb in about 35 minutes. “The ‘hard bodies’ can make it up in 20 minutes, down in 15,” 65-yearold Driggs said.

Camelback Mountain rises from the center of the metropolitan area, protected by a 387-acre urban wilderness park. Affluent neighborhoods and posh resorts ring the mountain, so the rich and beautiful use it as a gym. You can often tell from people's designer shoes and sports clothing where they've climbed socially.

Driggs, of Paradise Valley, gave a walking lecture on the mountain's history and ecology. A financier-hotel developer with a Ph.D. in economics, he has written a book about Camelback Mountain, which he climbs almost daily. As he talked, I began to see the mountain differently.

Early Indians, he explained, considered Camelback a place of worship, and left behind votive offerings of cloth-wrapped herbal cigarettes. Archaeologists later unearthed these gifts from the floor of the Ceremonial Grotto, a huge, scallop-shaped natural amphitheater just south of the Echo Canyon trailhead. Couples today still use the mountain as a backdrop for wedding rites.

I caught some breath each time Driggs stopped to schmooze with strangers. He's nimble over the rocks. I marveled at his stamina.

“You can experience several of Arizona's ecological zones on Camelback,” he continued, as I slipped quietly to the rear. “And the draws are home to all kinds of wildlife.” He poured a few drops of water from a canteen onto moss so dry it looked dead. In moments, almost magically, the moss uncurled with life and turned from black to lush green.

“People think the moss is dead, but it's just dormant, waiting to take advantage of the next rain,” he explained. The mountain is a year-round experience for Driggs, and he notes the smallest details. In springtime, for example, while watching honeybees work the yellow blossoms of a paloverde tree, he made a personal discovery.

“They look all yellow, but did you know that many paloverde blossoms have one white petal?” he asked. It was a bit of desert lore that had previously escaped me.

“We share this mountain with different lives,” he said, because the mountain is a refuge, really. Birds of prey and colonies of swallows nest in its sandstone cliffs. At night when the park closes, wild critters emerge to eat and be eaten. Urban coyotes have staked out claims on its slopes and adjacent resort golf courses.

“There's rattlesnakes up here, too,” Driggs cautioned. Sure enough, he has proof in photos of small tiger rattlers concealed in Camelback's crevasses.

We emerged from a rocky chute, topping out on a clear, sunny November morning, then headed right back down. Exercise is the objective of Camelback regulars grown blasé about the mountain's expansive vistas. But tourists struggle up just to peer down on a metropolitan area growing so rapidly its subdivisions resemble a culture expanding across a petri dish.

“Anytime someone comes to town, I bring them up here,” said Scottsdale management consultant David Graff, standing with several sweaty relatives on the summit.

“He just didn't tell us how hard it was,” his cousin, Joseph J. Grekowicz, a California airline pilot, complained, laughing goodnaturedly.

The view from Camelback's bald top takes in downtown Phoenix, the northern reaches of the metropolitan area, east to the Superstition Mountains, south to the Pima lands, west to the horizon altogether more metropolitan area than Los Angeles. You see the other metro Phoenix exercise mountains: Squaw Peak, North Mountain, Barnes Butte, Lookout Mountain, the White Tanks and South Mountain, the largest municipal park in the United States.

But Camelback Mountain gets premier billing just because it's so recognizable and because the big resorts recommend its trails to their guests. Reports of Unidentified Flying Objects over Camelback add an element of notoriety. An Internet singles group rates Camelback as a romantic place not a new notion. When he was young, Driggs said, “We used to come out here and neck.” The mountain's silhouette appears so often in advertising, on corporate letterheads, and