Hike Music Mountain and Tortilla Mountain Tonto National Forest, AZ

Mar 5, 2026 — I met up with Whiley, Ben, and Kevin for their annual pilgrimage to the desert. While the Superstition Mountains offer some absolutely incredible scenery and a fantastic trail system, we decided to snag three peaks that skip all of those fun features and instead bushwhack to remote lumps, albeit large ones.

We parked at the Tortilla Trailhead, accessible by any vehicle, and hiked Forest Road 213 south for a few miles. The road has some steep, rocky sections that only serious vehicles can handle, but driving them would shorten the hike significantly. We passed a couple of ranchers building a fence shortly before reaching the end of the road, the only people we saw all day. The road ended after a right turn at a junction, so we picked up Peters Trail #105, which entered a short-lived, narrow canyon within Tortilla Creek.

The trail was thoroughly muddled with cow pies, but fortunately it was in good shape and easy to follow. We entered a wide clearing with Tortilla Mountain looming above, but decided to save it for later and head to Music Mountain first since it was farther away. Peters Trail climbed a series of switchbacks up to the eastern shoulder of Tortilla Mountain – South Peak. Music Mountain came into view to the south, and the trail dropped slightly as it headed toward its base. Since the trail began bending away from our objective, we veered off and followed a drainage instead.

The slope to the summit was riddled with brush, most of which can be avoided by occasionally scrambling over boulders. To avoid some of the nonsense (and excess catclaw), I’d recommend first heading up to the broad ridge on the north side of Music Mountain rather than going straight up. It’s steep, but thanks to Peters Trail getting us most of the way out here, it was hard to complain about such a short section of off-trail hiking. This was a new perspective for me toward Weaver’s Needle and Superstition Benchmark, though at this higher elevation the landscape felt more tame and green compared to the usual colorful, cliffy terrain lower in the range.

We backtracked to the eastern saddle of Tortilla Mountain – South Peak and started up toward the obvious gully above. From below it looked quite brushy, but it turned out to be fairly reasonable once inside. Some Class 2 scrambling led into the gully, followed by a few fun Class 3 scattered within. About halfway up, the gully split, but both forks rejoined shortly after. We briefly considered traversing over to Tortilla Mountain instead of returning to the trail, but the terrain looked brushy with plenty of ups and downs, so we opted to backtrack.

Onward to Tortilla Mountain, the highest peak of the day and certainly the most work. We left Peters Trail at a point where the brush looked least offensive. From the trail, looking into the basin, we spotted an obvious slope on the right cutting up the large cliff face on Tortilla Mountain’s east side. It looked like a standard route, so we casually headed that way.

After a short cross-country schlep, we entered a mostly brush-free wash with scattered boulder obstacles. Ben and I were chatting, and the terrain was easy enough that we didn’t bother double-checking our route, only realizing much later that we’d drifted well off the standard line. Previous parties had gone farther left (and we soon learned Whiley had left us and done so too), but Ben and I stuck with our original choice. I’ll note that after we rejoined Whiley at the summit, she decided to descend our way and ended up liking it better.

Soon after leaving the basin, we hit a Class 3 move to get past a small cliff, then worked through some brush up the slope to gain the east ridge. The ridge itself was straightforward, just steep and mostly brush-free, and about halfway up we encountered a Class 3 cliff band and little else of difficulty to note. We also passed the remains of some old machinery along the way. The summit block required a few Class 2+ moves on massive boulders, and the views were similar to the other peaks today. None of us particularly liked Tortilla Mountain because it felt like the ascent took forever, but ultimately I thought it was a worthwhile effort.