Trail Heads and Parking The trail head is on Thompson Peak Parkway and Foothills Drive. This has a facility with toilets and drinking water. There is ample parking there as well, some paved, mostly finely graded dirt.
There is a secondary trail head on the north side of the McDowell's which is in a gated development. Apparently you have to park outside the development and then walk up to trail head.
Hike Distance From the main trail head it is a long hike about four miles one way and an eight mile round trip.
Hiking Time For a round trip from the gateway access area this is probably a four to five hour hike for experienced hikers.
Hike Elevation Approximately 3,000 feet.
Hike Difficulty Moderately to increasingly difficult for experienced hikers. Main issues are a series of difficult switchbacks prior to the Tom Thumb outcrop and the length of the hike necessitating a lot of water.
Trail Description From the Gateway trail head the hike is not heavily strenuous until a series of switch backs is hit. From then on it is a very strenuous hike until the small Plateau the Tom Thumb's rocks are on are hit.
Because it is a lengthy hike from the gateway access trail head it is a quiet hike with not many others on the trail. At the Tom's Thumb section it is busy as numerous hikers come up the northern trail from the north trail head which is much shorter.
The main source of difficulty with this hike is its length mixed in with the switchbacks that are a difficult ascent.
Trail Map 
Tom's Thumb on Google Maps. More on the
McDowell Regional Park including trails and maps.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
