Table Top 4373′
Southern Arizona
Total Time: 5:30
Distance: 9.0
Elevation Gain: 2565′
Crux: Class 1
Companions: Holly, Cara Whittingham
Trailhead: Tabletop Wilderness, 4WD, no services
In the vast undeveloped desert between Phoenix and Tucson sits Table Top, a prominent 4,000′ peak rising out of the flat expanse. Although fairly obscure, it had been on my to do list for quite some time, as it was the closest Arizona P2K summit to Phoenix that I had yet to do. With COVID-19 making local adventures and social distancing a priority, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to tag the obscure summit. We drove south from Phoenix early Saturday morning, cutting through the town of Maricopa before reaching the I-8 west of Casa Grande. Pulling off at the Vekol exit we met my sister, who drove up from Tucson to join us. From the exit, it was 16 miles of dirt road to reach the trailhead, and trip reports made the road sound a bit treacherous. But I was pleasantly surprised, the first 11 miles being graded dirt with the occasional easy wash to cross. It really didn’t get too bad until about 2 miles from the trailhead, and 4WD was certainly not required- just high clearance to get over some of the larger rocks in the road. We reached the trailhead and primitive campground late in the morning finding it completely empty as we had hoped. It was hard to believe the summit was less than 4 miles away looking at the massive flat-topped peak from below.
After weaving through some washes we reached a trail register and I signed us in, the summit seeing roughly one group per day. The trail slowly climbed out of washes onto subridges below the steep southwestern slopes. We took a short break about 2 miles in, the majority of our elevation gain still to come in the last mile and a half.
Although steep, the upper trail was well maintained and easy to follow, and we commiserated about our new lives of social distancing and self quarantine to pass the time. The switchbacks were aggressive, steeply cutting back and forth across a ridge running off the summit plateau.
The three of us crested out onto the summit plateau a little under 3 hours after starting out, and we hiked to the end of the trail to sit down and have a late lunch. It was a bit hazy, but we could still see south to Baboquivari Peak, Kitt Peak and Coyote Mountain, southwest to Mount Lemmon and the Oro Valley ridgeline, northeast to the Superstitions, north to the Sierra Estrellas and Hayes Peak, and west to the Eagletail Mountains and Woolsey Peak.
I knew from previous trip reports that the north summit was slightly higher, but the girls had little interested in finding the use trail across for what would assuredly be the same view. It was tough to argue, and we agreed that I could run across and tag the highpoint and catch up to them on the descent. We parted ways while they were packing up, and I followed a well defined use trail as it dropped down to the saddle between the two summits before winding along the summit rim. The use trail seemed like it was making no real effort to reach the high point, so I eventually left the trail and cut cross country for a large metal pole marking the highpoint and summit benchmark.
The views were indeed the same, and I quickly signed into the summit register before leaving, the true high point only seeing 1-2 people per month. I decided to cut cross country to the saddle, but the weaving around prickly pear and ocotillo negated any time I potentially saved by short cutting.
I picked up the pace back on the trail, and half jogged down the upper switchbacks to catch up with the girls, reaching them about 2/3rds of the way down the steeper slopes. Aside from a short break due to a bee string and cholla removal, we hiked along the trail straight back to the car. We ate some snacks at a picnic table at the campground before heading out, getting back down the 16 miles of dirt road to I-8 in under an hour. It was still relatively early, so we held out for better food in Phoenix… take out of course…
