Box Camp Trail #22
This empty sign board marks the Box Camp trailhead.
This diverse trail takes you deep into the Pusch Ridge Wilderness, dropping from 7,920 feet in elevation where it leaves the Catalina Highway to 3,760 feet in elevation when it terminates at the East Fork of Sabino Creek.
Difficulty: Not difficult for the first mile. After that, the trail is moderately difficult.
Current Condition (June 2024): The trail is a little overgrown, with fallen trees across the tread here and there.
Connecting Trails: Box Spring Trail #22A disappears a few hundred yards past its junction with Box Camp Trail #22. If you hike the entire Box Camp Trail, at the bottom it connects after 7.1 miles with West Fork Trail #24, East Fork Trail #39, and Sabino Canyon Trail #23.
Restrictions: No bikes. Dogs must be on leash.
Directions: Take the Catalina Highway past the Visitor Center. Turn left at the road sign for Box Camp Trailhead.
The Box Camp Trail in Pictures…
An outcrop next to the trail
Patches of the forest have burned and been replaced by bracken, which encroaches on the trail
Looking back, you can see a University of Arizona observatory below Mt. Bigelow.
After about a mile, the trail passes through a stately old-growth conifer forest.
Lovely section of old growth forest in the wilderness
Soon the trail braids with a small creek, which is often dry in places. Be careful to look for the trail on the other side of the wash each time you cross it, instead of heading up or down the wash itself.
Even if you see no water, water may be below the surface of the creek bed. When we were there, water came to the surface when it encountered solid rock and formed a series of blue pools.
Hiker is standing on the trail; much larger wash goes left
The trail continues down the wash to Box Camp, a flat area below the intersection of Box Camp Trail with the now-closed Box Spring Trail. The authors have not hiked past that intersection for about a decade.
Soon after leaving Box Camp, the trail moves out of forest into scrub. It follows a ridgetop, so the views are vast. You can have a ten-mile round-trip hike if you turn around at Apache Spring (elevation 5,920, so you’d have a 2,000-foot climb out). It's a nine-mile through-hike if you continue downhill to Sabino Canyon Road at 3,550 feet elevation, where you can ride the shuttle to the parking lot.
Pools of water in the creek bed