The canal path behind the Arizona Biltmore golf courses empties out fast once the sun drops below Piestewa Peak. By late June, the air off the water is still warm enough to feel like a held breath. By the second week of September, something shifts. The heat backs off just enough that a walk after work stops feeling like an endurance test and starts feeling like the whole point of living here.
Most of what gets written about the stretch of Arizona Canal Path running past Wrigley Mansion and toward 40th Street treats it as a single attraction: go see the bats, best in summer, bring water. That advice isn't wrong, but it skips the part that actually matters if you live in Biltmore Estates and plan to make this walk more than once. The bats aren't better in July. They're bigger in July. Those are different things, and the difference is the reason this month, not last month, is the one worth putting on the calendar.
The Maternity Colony Nobody Explains
The tunnel behind Phoenix Country Day School, just off 40th Street and Camelback, isn't actually a cave. It's a Maricopa County flood control channel that Mexican free-tailed bats have been roosting in since Arizona Game and Fish first started tracking the colony in the 1990s. Locals call it the Phoenix Bat Cave anyway, and the name has stuck long enough that it shows up on Google Maps.
What doesn't show up as often is that this is a maternity colony. Most of the bats using the tunnel are mothers with pups, and according to Angie McIntire, a bat specialist with Arizona Game and Fish, the newborns can throw off the whole show earlier in the season. In June and July, the emergence sometimes stalls or scatters because mothers are staying close to babies that can't fly yet. You show up at sunset expecting a wall of bats and get a trickle instead.
By September, that problem has solved itself. The pups born in early summer are grown enough to fly and hunt alongside the adults, which means the nightly exodus is no longer gated by newborns staying behind. The colony that felt unpredictable in July is, by this point in the season, moving as one unit. That's the trade nobody mentions in the generic version of this post: peak population happens in midsummer, but peak reliability happens now, in the final stretch before the bats head back to Mexico for the winter. The season runs roughly May through October, which puts the neighborhood in its last real month before the tunnel goes quiet again until spring.
The Walk Itself, Not Just the Destination
Getting there is part of the routine, not a preamble to it. From the Biltmore corridor, the canal path runs past the golf courses, close enough to Wrigley Mansion that the building's silhouette is visible before you're anywhere near the water. From there it's a straight, flat shot toward 40th Street.
If you're starting fresh from the Camelback and 40th intersection instead of walking down from the Biltmore side, the route is simple enough to describe in three steps:
- Walk north on 40th Street from Camelback Road until the office buildings on your right give way to a path running parallel to the canal.
- Follow that path west, past a parking garage and then past the school, until you reach a long fence line.
- The flood control tunnel sits just below that fence. Arrive 20 to 30 minutes ahead of sunset and find a spot on the south side of the channel.
The unwritten rule once you're there is quiet. This is a residential stretch, and the colony is sensitive to noise. Bring a chair or a blanket since there's nowhere to sit, and don't expect a sign to tell you when the show starts. It just starts, a trickle that turns into a stream that turns into thousands of bats peeling off toward the southwest to feed for the night.
The Path Underfoot Is Also Changing
The canal itself has been getting a quiet upgrade for a couple of years now, and the timing matters if you're the kind of resident who does this walk often enough to notice pavement. The Western Canalscape project, a partnership between Salt River Project and the City of Phoenix, finished its first phase from roughly 4th Avenue to 24th Street in 2024, adding a continuous concrete path, lighting, shade, and public art along that stretch.
The segment that actually runs past Biltmore and toward the bat tunnel, 24th Street to 48th Street, is Phase 2, and it's still in the pre-design stage. According to the city's project materials, that study is expected to wrap up this fall, with the community's preferred concept calling for a canal path up to 12 feet wide, a new pedestrian bridge near 36th Place, and more seating built in than fitness stations. Nothing is under construction yet on this stretch, but the design work concluding this season means the walk you're doing tonight is likely to look different within the next year or two. Worth knowing if you've been wondering why the path feels narrower and less finished the farther east you go from the Biltmore.
Where the Walk Ends
Two spots along this corridor function as the unofficial landing point once the bats are gone and the walk back begins. Chelsea's Kitchen sits on the canal near 40th Street in an adobe building with a hidden patio wrapped in mesquite trees, the kind of spot that turns a bat-watching walk into a full evening without much extra effort. A few minutes away, OHSO Brewery runs a dog-friendly patio with more than 40 beers on tap, the kind of low-key stop that fits a Tuesday as easily as a Saturday.
September also marks a shift in how the neighborhood itself operates socially. The Biltmore Area Partnership's calendar moves indoors this month, trading August's happy hour at Wrigley Mansion for a September luncheon at the Adobe Bar & Grille inside the Arizona Biltmore Golf Club ballroom. It's a small thing, but it's one more sign that the neighborhood's rhythm is recalibrating for cooler weather at the same time the bats are finishing their season.
None of this is information a visitor needs. It's the kind of detail that only matters if you're doing this walk again next week, and the week after that, until the tunnel empties out for the winter and the neighborhood's evening routine shifts to something else entirely.
If you're weighing what your Biltmore-area home is worth heading into this fall market, or you just want a conversation with someone who actually walks this canal, Vanessa Roark works this neighborhood block by block. You can book a complimentary Home Marketing & Strategy Session whenever the timing makes sense for you.
