Pick Your Hikes Carefully in Red Rock

On Wednesday (2-3), Kenny, Brian and others made it to the summit of Magic Mountain in Red Rock Canyon. Since most of the route faces east and south, they did not encounter snow and ice. As you can see in the photo (to the left) the upper part of the Juniper Peak route has lots of snow. And, guess what, it's north facing!

There are several hikes out of Calico Basin that are the first routes to become snow free. These routes are east facing and are at a lower elevation than other routes in Red Rock. Here's a short list of routes that are some of the first that become snow free:
Calico Traverse * Kraft Mtn Up and Across * Calico Tank Peak * Calico Tank and Peak East Face Route * Turtlehead Junior * Mescalito southern route. Of course any of the easy hikes the travel to the waterfalls are doable.

Why hike when the routes have snow and ice? There are so many nice days in Vegas. Obviously you can eliminate the problem completely by hiking around Lake Mead. I just updated the Hamblin Mtn route and there's the Bowl of Fire hikes, which are always fun.

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Magic Mtn, Anniversary Narrows Peak and More

On Thanksgiving, 10 hikers followed one of the wildest routes in Red Rock Canyon to the summit of Magic Mountain.This has been an annual Thanksgiving Day hike for the last few years. It's short enough to be back at the cars before noon. This is really a fun hike. Video of the chimney climb at the end of the blog.

On Friday, five of us hiked to Anniversary Narrows Peak in the Lake Mead area. This is one of the better hikes in the area. The rock is generally loose so caution is the name of the game when scrambling.

The blockage in the Narrows is much easier now. Small children and dogs can be lifted over the boulder. I have a photo from a few years ago. Gravel has filled in almost three feet of the bottom of the Narrows. Pretty incredible what nature can do and pretty incredible how stupid a man (boy) can be.

Notes: If anyone finds a climbing shoe in Lost Creek Canyon, please contact me.

Magic Mountain in June!

Today (6-5), Kathy and I took advantage of the below normal temperatures and hiked Magic Mountain in Red Rock Canyon. It was great! In fact, we were almost cold at the summit. Magic is a local favorite with enough scrambling to keep it very interesting and short enough to be a legitimate half day hike.

Kathy did great handling all the climbing with ease. I cleaned and cairned the route. It's in great shape now and ready for the fall season. Due to the high winds, we did not hike over to Crabby Appleton Peak.

We are off to Zion tomorrow to do the Subway. I believe I will film part of the hike. If so I will post the video along with photos. See everyone Monday and have a good weekend.

Access to Member's Only Section

Currently there's no access to the Member's Only section of HikingLasVegas.com. The web hosting company is moving my site to a new server. This should be resolved by Tuesday.

On Saturday (3-28), I led 18 hikers to the summit of Mt. Wilson via the shortcut route through First Creek Canyon. The route is in great shape and very well cairned. Those of us who are doing the four peak hike cached water near the summit.

Today (3-29) we had a film crew with us as we hiked to Magic Mtn in Red Rock Canyon. It was fun working with the film crew. Hopefully they got a lot of good footage. Magic is one of the best short hikes in Red Rock Canyon. Hiking Dave and I found the route back in 2004.