Silver Peak, 7,975', and Lookout Tower, 8,008', Chiricahua Mountains

Essence: Located on the eastern front of the Chiricahua Mountains, Silver Peak is accessed from Cave Creek Canyon a couple of miles west of the hamlet of Portal. The summit is a mere nine miles west of the New Mexico stateline as the crow flies. On the Portal topo map, "Lookout Tower" is the highpoint at 8,008 feet and Silver Peak is a subsidiary at 7,975 feet. However, on the Arizona P2K list, (prominence of 2,000 feet or higher) the summit is refered to simply as Silver Peak with a rise of 2,015 feet. (LiDAR has more accurately measured the Lookout at 8,002 feet.) You are encouraged to visit both summits. The Lookout Tower, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938, burned down in 1992 during a thunderstorm. Unimpeded views are swept up and disappear into the blue distance. The Silver Peak Trail is both impeccable and unusual. The Class 1 trail is as easy as it gets with a consistent mellow grade suitable for anyone in reasonable shape. While it propels you comfortably to the mountaintop, it preserves a sense of raw topography. There is nothing tame about the landscape. This is yet another peak in the range created by volcanism with concordant features such as curving sheets of smooth bedrock, monoliths, masses of clustered spires, sharpened blades, and globular blocks of weathered rock. The hike is within the Coronado National Forest.

Travel: For those heading east on I-10 (from the Tucson area) fuel up in Willcox. There is no gas station in Portal. Take Exit 382, signed for Portal. Follow the frontage road east for 0.9 mile. Turn 90 degrees south on Noland Road, paved but not striped. It is an empty road through empty country. Pavement ends at 10.2 miles. The fast gravel road is well graded. At a Y, 17.5 miles, go left onto Foothills Road. A sign, "Portal 9" is confirmation. The road bears southeast and at 24.2 miles is paved and striped. At the stop sign at 25.5 miles, turn right on Portal Road. Portal Store, Cafe, and Lodge is on the left at 26.3 miles. From the store, continue west on Portal Road for 0.6 mile and make a soft left onto Cave Creek Road. Enter the Coronado National Forest at 1.7 miles. Silver Peak Trailhead is on the right at 2.1 miles. Alternatively, if your vehicle cannot handle gravel, avoid Exit 382 and continue east on I-10 for 14 miles to Road Forks, NM. Drive south on NM-80 for 28 miles. Turn west on NM-533 which becomes Portal Road. The Portal store is 34 miles from Road Forks.

Distance and Elevation Gain: 10.7 miles; 3,100 feet
Total Time: 5:30 to 7:30
Difficulty: Trail; navigation easy; Class 1 with no exposure; Most of the hike is on north-facing slopes and would normally be ill-advised in winter.
Map: Portal, AZ 7.5' USGS Quad 

Date Hiked: January 16, 2026 

Poem:

Give me raw rock
Mountains. Impossible cliffs
Ponderosa. Piñon
& the silvery blue Juniper…
What works for the Wolf
Works for me
Art Goodtimes
 

Look closely to see a flight of steps rising to a platform where the Lookout Tower once stood. The highest point on Silver Peak is a chaotic jumble of angular blocks jutting abruptly from surrounding  timber. 

Route: From the trailhead in Cave Creek Canyon hike northwest, flanking the base of The Fingers on the northeast ridge of Mount Sceloporus. Circle to the southwest and cross a couple of ravines. Bear west directly under the north slopes of Silver Peak. Switchback south to contact the summit ridge. Mount the steps to the Lookout Tower and then take a social trail to Silver Peak proper. Retrace steps. 

I had been intrigued by Portal for years so we spent a night in town. I enjoyed walking the streets of this tiny enclave with homes made of river stone, a library and post office. We had a tasty dinner at the Portal Cafe. Locals said Portal was so named because it was the portal to Paradise, a mining town five miles west established in 1901, now a ghost town. If you have time, stop by the Visitor Information Center managed by the Friends of Cave Creek Canyon. Chiricahua Mountains Hiking Trails has an excellent description and map for Silver Peak Trail #280.

As we drove from Portal to the trailhead magnificent stone structures crowded both sides of the road. We could see snow at higher elevations which gave us pause. Would we make it to the summit? Cave Creek Canyon is affectionately called the "Yosemite of Arizona." I appreciate the love of place but having spent my childhood traipsing around Yosemite weeks at a time, it's a bit of a reach. Sierra granite and welded tuff are entirely different beasts. Signs from another era are posted at the trailhead. Some friends enjoyed staying in the Sunny Flat Campground. 

  

The sign at the Silver Peak Trailhead, elevation 4,980 feet, no doubt reflects the mileage to the summit before the trail was realigned. Substantially more switchbacks have been added since distance was originally calculated. Be prepared mentally for 5.2 miles to the Lookout, not 4.5. A local on a bicycle warned us she'd seen a couple of cougars recently. We adopted our cougar protocol, smaller person in front. We have seen more evidence of mountain lions in the Chiricahuas than any other range in Arizona. 

The footpath starts out due north. Watch for little tags identifying plants as you move up the trail: Arizona white oak, sotol, mountain yucca, alligator juniper, point leaf manzanita, honey mesquite, Emory oak, Arizona juniper, cholla, beargrass, and soaptree yucca. The sign for the Cave Creek Nature Trail identifies four life zones between here and the summit. In order they are: semi-desert grassland, oak woodland, pine-oak woodland, and pine-fir conifer forest. At 0.15 mile, the trail from the Visitor Center intersects and the trajectory shifts northwest. In the photo below there is a string of rocks intentionally set long ago. They appear randomly all over the lower elevations. (Thomas Holt Ward, photo) 

There is a staggering variety of delicate native grasses the color of pale straw. In January, wildflowers had gone to seed. It would be fascinating to return to see this mystery cluster blooming.  (THW, photo) 

This is one of the more remarkable and beautiful approaches to any mountain. The folds of foothills flow out from the bases of staggering monuments paying tribute to the torments of volcanism. Cooled and solidified long ago, they weathered into softened forms that the human heart and mind can grasp at some level. The grouping shown below is the southeast wall of Cave Creek.

These monuments are composed of welded rhyolite tuff, the same formation as the standing rocks in the Chiricahua National Monument. Erosive and weathering forces are clearly different on opposite sides of the range. Here we see fewer rock stacks and more cohesive massiveness. (THW, photo)  

 

The trail takes us on a linear tour through Earth's sculpture gallery. (THW, photo)   

Beside the trail are many Palmer's Agave, a protected native plant. When flowering they attract nectar-loving birds during the day, nectarivorous bats at night, and Sphinx moths during the day and night. 

In the afternoon back-lit grasses soften the foreground while Portal Peak rises abruptly 3,000 feet off the canyon floor.  

An expert fence rider went to a lot of trouble to protect a large Arizona oak while securing his barbed wire fenceline at 1.45 miles. 

The cowboy made it easy for hikers to wiggle through the fence. Much appreciated. In the West, fence posts are typically crafted from juniper logs. 

My favorite trailside boulder is composed of basalt. Welded tuff and basalt have different magma origins but they frequently coexist. This boulder is covered in vesicles, round cavities left by trapped volcanic gasses. It is rather proud of its lichen paint job. 

The trail pivots around The Fingers so they are in view for a long time. And that's a good thing because they attract the eye and hold it. They look like many tall spires smashed together at the base but separated at the top by whimsical shapes. I've noticed all over southern Arizona that welded tuff is consistently covered in sunshine yellow lichen. This image was snapped in the morning as the sun was awakening. (THW, photo)  

 

When we passed the same location in the afternoon, shadows separated the fingers and highlighted the blobby nuances. (THW, photo)   

 

Looking south, the broad brush of green provided by the piñon-oak woodland contrasts with the higher elevations. Ever more blue, peaks simply meld into the sky. 

Directly east of The Fingers the slope is covered in uniform crushed rock, presumably exfoliated from the monolith. Look closely and you can see the depressions made by a large animal crossing the red chips at an angle.  

A few paces further, rubble shed from the brown ring below The Fingers has gathered onto slabs of stone.   

 

As the trail started curving around to the north slope, casting us into the shade at 5,800 feet, the platform was covered in a thin layer of snow. We walked on snow for the next 2,200 feet, so grateful it didn't stop us. Cougar tracks stand out on snow and there they were. Cats appreciate trails too. Wiggle through another fenceline at 2.1 miles. Soon after, cross a ravine and arrive at a switchback with a directional sign. This was the beginning of the loose end that stumped hikers for years. Though the problem is solved, it is often referred to in trip reports. 

 

 

At 2.6 miles the pathway curves southwest and our elusive mountain briefly comes into view at last. Below, the linear cliffs of Mount Sceloporus are on the left and Silver Peak is on the right. The route bears west, passes under the mountain and then shoots south with a strong series of switchbacks to the summit ridge. Don't be alarmed by the idea of switchbacks. They are in place to moderate the grade for all of us. 

In fact, there are three sets of short switchbacks on the north slope of Mount Sceloporus. The path is thinner now and was covered in ice and snow. I don't recommend doing this hike in January. We got lucky but we were shivering in the shade most of the way. Leaving our tracks in a world of white, it was hard to conceive of a landscape covered in flowers. Below, I am heading downhill, about to cross one of the ravines below Mount Sceloporus. (THW, photo)  

You may not notice this 90 degree sheered off cliff on the way up but you certainly will going downhill.  It frames the Peloncillo and Animas mountains, and the Continental Divide in the Bootheel of New Mexico. 

There have been a few documented successful climbs up Mount Sceloporus, 7,993 feet (LiDAR 7,999'). The only description we could find was John Kirk's in LOJ. While the ranked summit (rise, 468 feet) shares a common ridge with Silver, the traverse is problematic. It appears that Kirk broke for the saddle at 3.8 miles, 7,000 feet. The curious name for the peak is explained on the placard at the trailhead. 

 

"The Chiricahua Mountains boast the greatest diversity of lizards in the United States, as well as the only peak designated with the Latin name of a lizard. In 1989, scientists from the American Museum of Natural History Southwestern Research Station named this summit for the Sceloporus genus of lizard. Four Sceloporus species, all covered with spiny scales, can be found in Cave Creek Canyon. (Yarrow's Spiny Lizard lives above 6,000 feet.) Watch for them sunning on rocks or doing pushups--their territorial display." Alas, the lizards were in a cold-induced dormant state in January. This coupling of standing rocks is the closest I can come to replicating a lizard. (THW, photo) 

We'd been charging up through different biozones and were now in a pine-fir conifer forest. We were walking through four inches of fluffy snow lined with clumps of bunchgrass common elsewhere in the range. 

We passed some impressive trailside boulders. 

At 4.5 miles the trail hooks a sharp turn east and mounts the final set of switchbacks south. There are three sets of free-standing outcrops radical enough to fascinate. Unfortunately, foliage obscured and prohibited a clean shot. 

  

The blade on this standing slab is razor thin. (THW, photo)  

This is the sheer face of the sharpened blade. (THW, photo)  

Gain the summit ridge at 5.1 miles, 7,940 feet. We walked north toward the Lookout Tower first, the more dramatic and higher of the two peaks. It is literally a couple of stair flights away. We paused at a small storage building or perhaps a radio facility. (THW, photo)  

The outhouse with a view was quickly falling to ruin. (THW, photo) 

There are two flights of stairs that once served the lookout. The first set is masterfully crafted with square blocks of stone. Once busy with the business of fire watching, they had returned to silence under a thin mantle of snow. 

The second flight made of cement is a miracle of engineering given the chaotic jumble of boulders they barge up. 

We topped out on the mountain at 5.2 miles. A cement foundation and round cistern are the only remaining vestiges of the not so distant past. The peak register is in an A-box. Three stuffed notebooks spoke to the popularity of this trail hike. (THW, photo, October, 2014)

A benchmark placed in 1916 was broken. The one pictured reads: "Fire Control Silver Peak, 1939." Punched in the center is "Seen Area Map Point."  

Given a whopping rise of 2,015 feet, the view is mesmerizing. To the west is the great bulk of the Chiricahua Mountains. Below, just left of horizon-center is Snowshed Peak, 9,665'. It is a major contributor to Cave Creek. Chiricahua Peak, 9,759', is barely visible northwest of Snowshed. 

Dos Cabezas Peaks protrude mightily from a small wooded range north of the Chiricahuas. The twin stone monoliths gnaw at the hearts of Class 4 scramblers. (THW, photo)  

You don't have to climb atop the cistern to see into the far reaches of New Mexico and Old Mexico.

 

From there, the vertiginous nature of the tiny summit platform is obvious. It is literally placed amongst a pile of massive sharp, angular boulders. The feats of engineering the CCC pulled off never ceases to amaze me. Silver Peak proper is the very next roller to the south. You have to possess a very good reason to skip this little side trip. (THW, photo)  

 

The off-trail walk to Silver Peak adds 0.3 mile round trip. There is a thin and fragmented social trail. Just stick as close to ridgetop as possible. Negotiating brush is minimal. We found great clumps of hedgehog on the summit ridge, sure to dazzle when blooming. An authentic historic sign was resting on the ground. "Silver Peak, 7,975'." We found Reference Markers No. 1 and 2 dated 1957 (pictured below the sign) but no benchmark.  While this is not a ranked summit there was a peak register in a glass jar (with no writing implement). 

The little roller offers the best perspective on the Lookout Tower. (THW, photo) 

 

Below, I'm checking out Mount Sceloporus and Portal Peak. The ease of the trail lifting us so high is a fabulous introduction to the east side of the Chiricahua range. It lit up all sorts of options for further exploration. (THW, photo) 

Back on the Silver Peak Trail we skimmed quickly down through the snow, forever it seemed. I had that sensation I get every now and then. Did I really climb all this distance? It seemed so effortless in the morning but it's a long ways down! Compensating, was whole body contentment at the warm end of a deeply satisfying day. It is a contentment that is the purview of the desert and only the desert. Silent, still, and slow.