- Arizona County HP: #12
- Difficulty: ⭐️ (on a scale of 4)
- Summit Elevation: 9,445 feet
- Mountain Range: White Mountains
- Ancestral Lands: Pueblo, Western Apache
PLANNING DETAILS
Location: Greenlee County’s highest natural point is located in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, approximately 100 miles southeast of Show Low. The closest town with amenities is Alpine, AZ.
When to Visit: Late Spring to Fall. The high point is located directly beside the Coronado Trail (US Hwy. 191), a 120-mile National Scenic Byway through the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona. The Arizona Department of Transportation closes access to this paved road during the winter months due to its unprotected curves and drop-offs, which are extremely dangerous in winter weather. Visitors can check the road’s closure/re-opening status online at AZ 511.
Fees/Permits Required: None
Getting There: There is no official trailhead for this unnamed high point. However, there is a small paved pullout on the east side of US-191, roughly 3.3 miles south of Hannigan Meadows.
Directions from Phoenix: Follow AZ-202 east toward Tempe/Mesa. Take Exit 13 (AZ-87/Country Club Drive) toward Payson. Follow AZ-87 north for 74 miles. At the north end of Payson, turn right onto AZ-260 toward Show Low. Follow AZ-260 east for 88 miles until the junction with US-60. Turn left, and follow US-60 east for 48 miles to the town of Springerville. Turn right on US-191 (Cornado Trail Scenic Byway) and follow it south for 54 miles.
Directions from Tucson: Follow I-10 east for 98 miles. Take Exit 352 (US-191) toward Safford, and follow US-191 north for 50 miles. Once in Safford, turn right onto US-70, and follow US-70 east for 10 miles. Turn left onto US-191, and resume following US-191 north for 23.5 miles. At the traffic circle, take the exit onto US-191 (Coronado Trail Scenic Byway) and follow in north for 76 miles.
Parking: There is a paved shoulder between mile markers 227 and 228 on the Coronado Trail Scenic Byway, which is wide enough for 3-4 cars to park on the northbound side of the road. The closest amenities (toilets, water, trash) are located at Hannigan Meadow Lodge and restaurant, 3 miles north on US-191.
Pets Allowed: Yes.
Kid Friendly: The short distance to this CoHP makes it suitable for kids, but the majority of the hikes is cross-country among fallen trees.
The Summit: This modest bump on the landscape is covered with (a mix of live and fallen trees). The hill’s summit is marked by a rock pile, along with a red can containing the summit register.
TRIP SUMMARY
Date Visited: April 24, 2026
Route Used: Cross-country travel from US-191 – 0.8 miles (round-trip)
One generally doesn’t get excited about unnamed high points. This is particularly true when that high point is just a small hill, and there isn’t even a hiking trail to enjoy. However, Greenlee County is a unique and scenic sliver of eastern Arizona that very few tourists see during their time in the state.
This easy-to-summit CoHP sits adjacent to the Coronado Trail, a National Scenic Byway as it runs through the White Mountains. The curvy road begins in Springerville, AZ, and heads south past Alpine, Hannigan Meadows, and the Morenci Mine before ending near Clifton.
The driving route follows the general route used by Spanish Explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540 AD on his expedition from Mexico into the Southwest in search of the fabled “Seven Cities of Cibolla (gold).” The state of Arizona opened the paved road through the White Mountains in the 1920s, originally calling the treacherous stretch “the Devil’s Highway” (and Old Route 666) due to its sharp curves and steep drop-offs.
Today, this scenic byway is renowned for providing visitors with tremendous seasonal views of the snowy landscape, springtime wildflowers, wildlife, and fall colors in the White Mountains. But the most surprising sight along the route might be the Morenci Mine, one of the world’s largest copper mines, with a 4,500-foot-deep open pit down near its southern end.
Since the Greenlee County high point is off this scenic byway, I was fully committed to driving the entire 120-mile Coronado Trail during my visit.
After a comfortable night in the Marilyn Monroe suite at Reed’s Motor Lodge last night, I had every intention of making today a light, easy day. My only goal was to drive from Springerville, AZ, to Safford, AZ, and make a quick 0.8-mile detour to bag the Greenlee CoHP en route.
Over the prior three days, I’d already been driving like a madwoman and put 900 miles on the rental car, with visits to the Yavapai CoHP (Mt. Union), both Gila CoHPs (Promontory Butte and Myrtle Point), the Navajo CoHP (Black Mesa HP), and the Apache CoHP (Mt. Baldy).
I needed a bit of a rest after all that driving and hiking, so I plugged Hannigan Meadow into my GPS and set off for the easy drive south. Everything was going according to plan, too. But when I stopped for a coffee, I made the mistake of reading a text from one of my fellow highpointers, named Mihai.
Mihai and I interviewed on a podcast together back in 2025. And he’d been busy granning a bunch of the Arizona CoHPs over the New Year’s holiday. I’d been pleasantly surprised to see his name directly above mine in the Black Mesa summit register two days ago, so I snapped a photo and texted him with a cryptic: “Guess where I am?” text message.
Mihai texted me back with a few helpful pointers on some of my upcoming hikes. And when I shared my current plans for the day, he told me it was 100% worth detouring to Greenlee County’s most prominent point, Guthrie Peak, while I was in the area. I was going to drive right by it on my way to Safford.
I took a super quick look at the map, and it didn’t seem like much effort to add Guthrie Peak to my day. It was literally right off US-191. Heck, I might even be able to drive up to the summit. It looked like there was a BLM road all the way to the top. Of course, that’s not how it would turn out… but first, back to the Greenlee CoHP.
The drive to Greenlee County was scenic and uneventful. The cool mountain air of the White Mountains gave my environment an alpine feel. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I made good time to the Hannigan Meadow Lodge. This remote log cabin-style lodge was built in 1926 and is the only business along the 100-mile drive between Alpine and Clifton.
About three miles beyond Hannigan Meadow, I found mile marker 228 and slowed for the paved turn-out just a bit further south that would be my de facto trailhead for this brief adventure. There weren’t any signs to let me know I’d arrived. Just this brief little area to pull the car off the highway and find my way to the high point.
According to my map, there used to be a dirt logging road that circled around the high point, taking visitors to the summit. Very little of the road exists anymore once you get beyond the first 0.2 miles of it. Several wildfires, including the Bear Fire in June 2021, burned this area pretty substantially. So the easy walking on the road was over very quickly.
After about 0.2 miles of hiking through the light green leaves of new regrowth, I reached the road’s end. It was time to head cross-country on a more direct route to the CoHP. From here, downed trees blocked my path, forcing me to slowly meander and climb over dozens of logs en route to the barely imperceptible rise east of the highway.
After another 0.2 beleaguered miles of cross-country travel, I crested the small rise and made it to a clearing that didn’t have a single fallen log atop it. I’d arrived at a flat, open area slightly elevated above the road, with absolutely no views of the White Mountains.
I spun around in a circle to see if there was anything marking the county high point, and that’s when I discovered a bunch of rocks piled atop a boulder at the edge of the clearing.
As with many of the other Arizona CoHPs, there was a small summit register hidden in the rocks, marked by a bright red coffee can. I’d reached my 12th county high point and only had three more left before I finished the list!
I returned to the car via a slightly more direct but equally slow cross-country route through the fallen trees. This had been the easiest high point yet. And I was now done with the one task I needed to complete for the day. All that was left was to enjoy the scenic drive south through the mountains.
I stopped at a few of the vistas along the long, slow drive south just to take in the views. But mostly, I just leisurely drove as the road curved back and forth through the mountains. It was such a beautiful sunny day, and there wasn’t a lick of snow or ice to worry about.
As I neared the southern end of the Coronado Trail, I spotted something distinctly different emerging from my surroundings. So far, I’d mostly been driving amid green trees and bushes. But up ahead, an orange mound stuck up between the gaps in the green hills. I was just catching my first glimpse of the famed Morenci Mine.
As I continued further south, the road actually took me through the mining operation, with massive terraced slopes and pits on either side of the highway. The mine even built a viewing platform where visitors could pull off the road to watch giant dump trucks race back and forth below.
I’d read that this was the largest copper mine in North America and one of the largest open-pit mines in the world. But nothing prepared me for seeing the massive scale of this operation! It was simply overwhelming and impossible to completely take in visually.
Even departing the mine was unusual. Instead of the road going between terrain features or over the edge of the mine, drivers were taken through giant tunnels through the slopes of the mine’s southern end.
When I finally made it out of the mine, I entered Clifton, the first town I’d seen in three and a half hours. The scenic byway is only 120 miles long, but the winding road with hairpin turns didn’t allow for quick transit. This is probably why Google Maps wanted to take drivers east into New Mexico on US-180 instead of south on the Coronado Trail.
I now had a decision to make. I could follow my original “easy day” plan and simply drive to my hotel in Safford, AZ. Or I could take Mihai’s suggestion and try to bag the county’s most prominent point (CoPP) on the way to Safford.
I checked my watch. It was just before 3 pm. I definitely had time. Especially if I was able to drive partially up the road to Guthrie Peak. And so, I set off toward the access gate on US-191 to see about bagging the CoHP and CoPP in the same day.
When I reached the turn-off toward Guthrie Peak, I encountered a 3-foot chain link fence with a BLM sign asking visitors to close the gate behind them. Beyond the gate, the dirt road looked fine. My rental car would totally get up this, I thought to myself.
My hubris would come back to bite me, though. The further I drove up the road, the worse it got. After a quarter mile, the road became rutted as it bent around a livestock corral and cattle loading ramp. Another quarter mile later, the road became rutted, and it was a real challenge to avoid bottoming out. Then the loose, grapefruit-sized rocks appeared, and I became even more worried about getting the rental car stuck.
I feverishly looked for a place wide enough to park and turn around. My rental car didn’t have nearly high enough clearance for this road. This was a Jeep road in every sense of the word. High clearance and 4WD were prerequisites that I didn’t have on this modest Kia Niro.
When I reached the one-mile mark, the road mellowed out a little. But, I didn’t want to risk it transitioning back to something worse again. So as soon as I reached the open gate where I had ample room to turn the car around, I took it as a sign. The remaining 3 miles to the summit would need to be on foot.
Thanks to the Jeep road, the hike to the summit was pretty easy. There was no cross-country travel involved, and no fallen trees to act as hurdles. The only obstacle was a few cattle guards to navigate as I ascended toward one of the ugliest summits I’ve ever seen. Ugh! The top of Guthrie Peak was ridiculously crowded with cell towers and microwave antennas.
Nonetheless, Guthrie Peak did have two things going for it. I could see Morenci Mine off to my northeast, and Mt. Graham (tomorrow’s CoHP) off to my west. And there was a survey benchmark on the summit, too.
So after the briefest of stays atop Greenlee County’s most prominent peak, I was ready to descend the three miles back to the car. Each mile that I got closer, though, I began to fret just a little bit more about the drive back to the highway. That one-mile drive in was pretty sketchy. What if I got a flat tire? Or got hung up on a rock? Would I have cell service to call a tow truck?
During the final 50 meters to the car, I was so hyper-focused on the task ahead of me that I nearly missed the rattlesnake that was stretched out on the road ahead of me. I quite literally didn’t notice it until I was about 15 feet away, which is WAY too close for my comfort! I hate all snakes. And rattlesnakes are the worst.
I did, however, make my way safely around the snake and back into the car without incident. Plus, I was able to drive back to the paved highway without getting stuck. I did, however, manage to scare a lone cow who was drinking water near the corral, and I was briefly worried that it might charge the car.
But the real lesson here was: do not take any more of Mihai’s suggestions! Hiking up the CoPPs isn’t really isn’t a goal of mine. The sole reason I had as many of the Arizona CoPPs under my belt was simply because so many of them overlapped with the CoHPs. And it turns out that Guthrie Peak’s antenna-covered summit isn’t even the county’s most prominent peak! It actually shares the honor with Maple Peak. So the entire detour was really just a wild goose chase!
BONUS MATERIAL
Public camping nearby:
- KP Cienega Campground is the closest camping to the county high point and one of the highest-elevation campgrounds in Arizona. Located 3.5 miles south of the Greenlee Co. high point on US-191, this small USFS campground offers 5 campsites, a vault toilet, and picnic tables. There is no potable water. Campsites are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Cost: Free.
- Luna Lake Campground is located just west of the town of Alpine, AZ. This USFS campground is open seasonally (May to October) and offers 50 campsites near Luna Lake, vault toilets, potable water, picnic tables, trash, fishing, and a boat ramp. A tackle and bait shop is also operated by a concessionaire on the lake. Online reservations are available. Cost: $34/night.
- Rainbow Campground is located 20 miles west of Alpine, AZ, and is ideally situated for highpointers who would like to visit the Apache Co. high point (Mount Baldy) and the Greenlee Co. high point during their visit to the White Mountains. It is also adjacent to Big Lake, one of Arizona’s top fishing destinations. This USFS campground is open seasonally (May to October), offers 165 campsites, flush toilets and showers, trash, picnic tables, water access to Big Lake, boat ramp, boat rental, RV dump station, and a general store. Online reservations are available for peak season stays. However, Loop F campsites (sites 130 thru 152) and late-season stays are only available on a first-come, first-served basis. Cost: $34-36/night.
Resources:
- Greenlee Co. High Point (Peakbagger)
- Coronado Trail (Arizona Highways)
- Hannagan Meadow Lodge (Historic lodge & restaurant on Coronado Trail)
- Greenlee County Tourism