This is an off trail scrambling adventure that takes you up the goldfield ridgeline up to temptation peak and back down to the bulldog saddle trail and back to the car.

My girlfriend and I parked at the Meridian Trailhead at the north end of Meridian Road in Apache Junction. There were plenty of cars already parked as this seems to be a popular area so parking was somewhat limited but I managed to get lucky and get a spot. The route I followed was to approach the peak counterclockwise where I would start my hike at the bulldog saddle trail and take an immediate right until I reached the southern terminus at the end of the series of mountains. From there there is a cairn that marks the end of the established trail and starts going up an extremely faint use trail. I did end up losing this trail multiple times but would randomly meet up with it in our adventure.

Once we reached the ridgeline there is a rather large clearing where my girlfriend commented it would be great to take some of our gear up there and camp since we already had some pretty incredible views to our south. From there, the route up starts to become rather scrambly with some very fun easy class 3 moves with very minimal exposure. Once this little challenge is over you'll be met with yet another clearing where Temptation peak is clearly seen as well as Peak 3108 directly to the right. I decided to jolt over to peak 3108 for fun where we could take a small break and eat some snacks before we made our full attempt at Temptation Peak.

The climb to Temptation Peak was another easy class 3 scramble to the summit where we celebrated and logged our names on the summit log. After some time of taking in the view and taking pictures we decided to continue on and meet back up on the northern side of Bulldog Saddle.

I had read that there was a particularly difficult exposed class 3 section somewhere along the hike where people would note that that section is the reason to do this counterclockwise and wow they were not joking! The descent down temptation peak back to the ridgeline was fine for a solid 2 minutes before we were faced with huge drop offs on either side and a not so simple way of climbing down. My girlfriend put on her gloves and we got to work. She led the way this time since she's better at going down than me but after a solid 10-15 minutes of work, we made it through the scrambling section. Whatever you do, take your time and stop and study the terrain before making any move. And remember, 3 point of contact at all times because you do not want to make a mistake here haha.

After this section, hiking through the ridgeline was pretty straightforward. We debated on hitting a few other of the northern peaks but we both had responsibilities to take care of back in the city so we decided to come back at a later time to do those. Eventually we reached the point where we decided to hike down back to bulldog saddle and this honestly was the worst part of the hike for me. It was thick with cacti and desert plants and having to bushwack on a steep slope with some questionable loose rock sections was not ideal for me. There were multiple times where jumping cholla stuck into my shoe while I was actively trying to avoid getting hit by thorny branches and other plants. I personally did not enjoy it, but my girlfriend loved the adventure and was having a blast throughout the whole thing.

Eventually we made it back to bulldog saddle trail and made our way back to the car for a total round trip time of about 5 hours.

Like all of my other recordings, I recorded this trip on alltrails where I accidentally paused my recording at one point but kept it going as soon as i realized lol. Here is the link to that: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/temptation-peak-trail-93ac0c5