canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #7
Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 3:15pm

Ah, the last leg. ...Well, almost the last leg of the day's excellent on hike the Owl Canyon Loop. The last leg will be trekking across the wash and back up the butte to the trailhead. This next-to-last leg is the thing the trail is named for: the actual Owl Canyon.

After crossing through the tunnels under an abandoned desert highway we hiked through a narrow wash to another tunnel, this one under the not-abandoned desert highway, then into Owl Canyon.



As we hiked the loop in a counter-clockwise direction the hike through Owl Canyon was easy. It was down. Though Owl Canyon was inherently easier than the other canyon we ascended through as there were no places we had to scramble over rocky ledges.

Watch the video I've stitched together here to see the entrance to the narrows, the narrows, and the erratic path between the layers of sandstone and sediment. It's cool when the canyon is just 3' wide... as well as when it's 10' wide at the top and 50' wide at the bottom.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #5
Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 2pm

After a fun little detour to the Slot Canyon River Rapids we trekked back to the Owl Canyon Loop and headed up one of the Canyons. No, this wasn't the namesake Owl Canyon.... If I read the map right, that's the one we'll be descending near the end of the loop today. But this unnamed canyon is a great hike.



As with my previous blog in this series I've decided that while a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a bunch of photos. So I've strung together a bunch of video snippets I captured as I trekked up the canyon into a short narrative. Enjoy! And there's more to come....

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #4
Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 1:15pm

After starting hiking the Owl Canyon Loop trail on Saturday and spending a while exploring atop a butte we scrambled back down to the main trail and towards the mouth of one of the actual canyons. This part of the trail parallels the Las Vegas Wash, which drains from Lake Las Vegas, a small reservoir, to Lake Mead, which is a huge reservoir. We could see there was water flowing in the wash. There were also rocky spires, named as pillars on our topographic map, close to the water. Thus when our trail turned left at a junction— away from the river— I opted instead to turn right, toward the river.

Did I mention our map also showed one of these pillars next to a spot identified as "Slot Canyon River Rapids"? Yeah, there was no way I was not taking a detour to see that. And it did not disappoint. Here's a short video I recorded next to the river:



This river is both natural and artificial. It's natural, in that it really is a real river, the Las Vegas River. It drains the Las Vegas basin into the Colorado River. But it's also artificial—or, rather, its flow is artificial— because there's a dam upstream. But today's flow is also natural because it actually rained in Las Vegas two days ago. And not just a quick sprinkle but a full day. Las Vegas gets, like, two days of rain a year. So half the year's rainfall is pouring through this slot right now.


canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #3
Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 12:15pm

What's there to do in Las Vegas if you don't like gambling, shows, or fancy restaurants? There's hiking! And while it's not in Las Vegas it's also not far out of it.

Saturday morning we drove out to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the trailhead for Owl Canyon. Although we got a later start on the day than I wanted to I knew there was plenty of time left in the day— especially if this hike was all we wanted to do. And even at the trailhead I could tell we were in for an enjoyable time.

Oh, I'm so scared! Owl Canyon Trail, Lake Mead National Recreation Area (Feb 2025)

I mean, anytime a sign warns the trail is tough... that's generally code for, "Really fun for even moderately experienced hkers." It's scare-words for "Weak-sauce city folk STAY OUT." 🤣

The Owl Canyon trail starts by descending from a high bluff (Feb 2025)

The trail starts with a steep descent down from the the top of the bluff where the parking area and some picnic tables are. Ugh, that's going to be not-fun as the last part of the trail when we're coming back tired. At least it's not a huge climb out. I don't think it's more than about 100' ascent back up.

Bluff above Las Vegas arm of Lake Mead NRA (Feb 2025)

Across the wash at the bottom of the canyon the trail climbs over another bluff. This one's not so vertical as the one the trail starts from. It's prettier, though, with orange-red rocks and views across to the Las Vegas Wash.

Hawk and I took a detour to explore the top of the bluff instead of following the trail that quickly descended from a saddle point. Curiously there are lots of seashells up here.

How did all the shells get here? Our first thought was that birds dropped them after fishing the waters of the lake. But quickly we saw that there are thousands of shells up here. That's too many for birds dropping them after eating. This spot must've been underwater at some point in the past. ...But the water level in Lake Mead, which you can see in the pic above, looks to be at least 100' below us. How long ago would it have been high enough to cover this ground? It can't have been too many years ago as otherwise there wouldn't be so many shells in such good condition due to weathering. Also, the Hoover Dam that created Lake Mead only finished construction in 1935.

Walking a bluff at Lake Mead NRA (Feb 2025)

We walked along the bluff top, exploring the views from different angles. The views up here were just so beautiful we kept going instead of doubling back, hoping there might be an exit down the far side. Plus, it was special being up here because while we saw occasional small groups of hikers on the trail below, nobody else thought to explore up here atop this butte. Hooray, solitude!

Update: I learned in visiting the Hoover Dam the following day that the last time the lake level rose to a high of 1,225' elevation above sea level in 1983. The bluff we were standing on was at about 1,200' elevation. So possibly the seashells we were seeing atop this bluff have sat there undisturbed for 40 years. Now that is some solitude!

On a bluff near the mouth of Owl Canyon, Lake Mead NRA (Feb 2025)

In this panoramic photo (above) you can see the trail winding around beneath the bluffs. In the distance is the actual Owl Canyon. We'll hike a loop that has us going up another canyon and then coming down Owl Canyon, exiting it in this area. Then we'll hike over the saddle point halfway up this bluff and climb the first bluff back up to the trailhead. But that could be hours from now, and now is now....

Gypsum rocks, Lake Mead NRA (Feb 2025)

On the far side of the bluff we found this odd mineral deposit. It looks like snow! It's actually gypsum. We scrambled over a bunch of large gypsum boulders to climb down the bluff. We had to be careful on them as gypsum is a soft mineral. If we stepped on a thin deposit, it could crumble under our feet and send us tumbling.

We got down the rough backside of the bluff okay. Then we bushwhacked through a bunch of dead bushes in the wash where the lake level had been higher recently, and climbed back up the slope on the far side to rejoin the trail.

To be continued!

canyonwalker: Cheers! (wine tasting)
Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #12
Back at the hotel - Sun, 16 Feb 2025, 8pm

Tonight is a lot like last night. We finished up fantastic hiking by 4pm, went for an early dinner at a Golden Corral buffet restaurant, and retired early to our room in a low-rise hotel very far off the Strip. Yes, today we ate at Golden Corral again. But it was a different Golden Corral restaurant. 😂 Hawk didn't like the one last night because they didn't have her favorite dinner dish— or her favorite dessert. The one we visited tonight had both. It also had more of a carnival atmosphere inside. (That's a bad thing, BTW. But we mostly ignored it.)

Also like last night I'm pushing this blog forward while letting several journals full of photos and videos from the hike(s) that need processing wait. At this point one— one— from yesterday is ready to publish. Another 5 are in the backlog behind this one. I'll work the backlog after we get back from our trip Monday night.

The one thing not like yesterday is where we went. I already posted in this morning's blog that we went to Valley of Fire State Park. There we hiked to the Fire Wave, probably the most famous spot in the park; continued the trail around in a loop through the Seven Wonders trail; and then hiked the White Domes loop.

We were spent after that and also red-rocked out. We skipped even drive-to spots elsewhere in the park, instead opting for a scenic drive home through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. It was over an hour of easy, country-highway type driving, through a combination of wide-open Mojave Desert vistas (basin-and-range geography, not flat desert) and occasional canyons and red rocks outcroppings.

Now we're back at the hotel, resting and unwinding from a busy day. And we've still got tomorrow's activities to plan. Our flight home isn't until 7:30pm, so we can plan a full day!

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