Groom Creek Loop Trail #307: The Hike From the Front Door

Trail #307 starts at the Groom Creek Horse Camp on Senator Highway, which is about as close to the cabins as a trailhead gets. It climbs 1,614 feet over 9.2 miles to the fire lookout on Spruce Mountain and comes back down the other side. It is the longest maintained loop near Prescott and the only one you can reach without driving into town.

The loop at a glance

Starting at 6,400 feet

Groom Creek sits at roughly 6,400 feet, about 1,000 feet above downtown Prescott, and the trail starts from there rather than from the valley. That is why the loop feels less brutal than the numbers suggest: you begin most of the way up. It is also why the forest is ponderosa the whole way rather than the scrub and manzanita you walk through on Granite Mountain.

The climb is steady and shaded, switchbacking through pine with almost no exposed sections. In summer it is ten to fifteen degrees cooler than the trails around Watson Lake, which is the entire argument for hiking on this side of town in July.

The lookout

The top is a Forest Service fire lookout tower at about 7,700 feet. Whether it is staffed depends on the fire season and the year. The view is the reason to walk up: the Bradshaws running south toward Crown King, the Sierra Prieta west, and on a clear day the San Francisco Peaks 80 miles north above Flagstaff.

The short way up

You do not have to walk nine miles. Spruce Mountain Road runs most of the way to the summit, and driving it turns the lookout into a short stroll. The road is dirt, generally fine for an ordinary car in dry conditions, and genuinely impassable after snow or during a wet monsoon week. It closes seasonally in some years.

That is worth knowing in winter, when the loop itself stays walkable but the road does not. What the county plows and what it does not is set out in driving to Groom Creek in winter.

Sharing with horses

The trailhead is a horse camp, so this is stock country. If you meet riders, stand still on the downhill side of the trail and let them pass. Mountain bikes use it too, mostly descending, mostly fast.

Practical notes

There is no water on the loop and no fee to park. Fire restrictions apply through the dry months and they cover far more than campfires, including where you may park a hot vehicle. What each stage actually prohibits is in fire restrictions around Prescott.

If nine miles is more than you want, the same forest is reachable on shorter trails, and all ten local options are compared in the best hikes around Prescott.