Black Mountain Overlook Hike at Bootleg Canyon - Summary Page

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12/29/2015 Trip Notes: This was actually my third hike to the overlook. Click here for more pictures and information on this hike ... Black Mt. & Red Mt. Trails at Bootleg Canyon.

05/30/2015 Trip Notes: Taking the Bootleg Canyon Road, we drove to the parking area at the top of the canyon. We then proceeded to hike to the top of Black Mountain. The picture in (Fig.02) shows the trail as it snakes it way to the summit in the upper right. The views from this trail and from the summit of Black Mountain were much better than those I had from the Red Mountain trail on my previous visit. Once we reached the summit we both sat on the bench (Fig. 03) to rest, have a snack and some water. There were outstanding views in every direction (Figs. 04 thru 07). Looking to the southeast was Boulder City (Fig. 04); to the northwest was Las Vegas (Fig. 05); to the northeast was Lake Mead (Fig. 06); and to the southwest were the solar plants in Eldorado Valley (Fig. 07). Unfortunately, I was staring directly into the early morning sun for several shots which hindered the quality of several of my pictures.Not only did we pass dozens of lizards along the trail to the top, I found this guy (Fig. 08) at the vary summit. (Fig. 09) was a final look at Lake Mead.

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Description: From the drive-up trailhead, there is no sign, but the trail starts down the hillside from the northeast corner of the parking area (refer to Fig. 01). As can be seen from the trailhead, the trail runs down about 0.2 miles the hillside to the intersection with the River Mountains "Foot" Trail. About 100 yards farther down the trail, the trail forks, with a bicycle trail going left (north) and down the hill, while the Black Mountain Trail goes right and up the hill (east). The first sign here reads: "River Mtn Hiking Trail, No Bicycles." The second sign states: "Foot Traffic Only." Follow the foot trail eastward as it slowly climbs toward Black Mountain Overlook (Fig. 02). The trail runs around a hill on the ridge and comes up to a nice overlook with views down into the canyon below, the trail coming up the canyon, and Boulder City in the distance. Continuing upward, the trail switchbacks to the right, then in about 110 feet, switchbacks 180-degrees to the left, at a spot where bedrock makes the switchback somewhat obscure and easy to miss. A a well-defined trail continues straight. for about 50 feet to an overlook view of Boulder City. If you missed the switchback (as we did) turn around and hike back 50 feet and the switchback becomes obvious. At the summit, elevation 3,526, the overlook is a great place to sit, relax, and take in the grand scene. To the north is Las Vegas, to the east is Lake Mead, to the south is Boulder City, and to the west are the Black Mountains. In all direction, mountain ranges stretch off into the distance. This last leg of the trail is about 0.6 miles, making the total round trip hike from the parking area about 1.6 miles with an elevation gain of 231 feet.
                             

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Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve–Trip Notes for 05/23/2015

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05/23/2015 Trip Notes: Today, Blake Smith and I decided to choose this location for one of our early morning hikes. Even though we both have been here on previous occasions, it is always a great place to take a peaceful walk, away from the sights and sounds of the city. Located within the Water Reclamation Facility, its nine ponds (Figs. 02 & 04) sit on approximately 140 acres and are home to thousands of migratory waterfowl as well as numerous resident desert birds. It is located on the eastern edge of the Pacific Migratory Flyway and many of the birds that come here are only temporary visitors. Regardless of the season, you can always find a wide variety of birds and waterfowl. Over the past several years, the city has done a great job of planting many flowering trees and shrubs (Figs. 03 & 05) that continue to add some beauty and color to the complex. In addition to dozens of cottontail rabbits (Fig. 06), today’s visit produced sightings of Gambel’s quail, morning doves, American avocets (Figs. 07 & 13), a Double Crested Cormorant (Fig. 08), a Black Crowned Night Heron (Fig. 09), some male and female Mallards (Fig. 10), some Canada Geese (Fig. 11), a male Northern Shoveler (Fig. 12), and a male Yellow Headed Blackbird (Fig. 14), and many more that I was unable to photograph. I give credit to Raymond Healey, one of our fellow rock-hound hikers who works at the preserve for helping me identify the birds in these pictures.

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(Fig. 07) - TITLE - I Think I Know You

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China Ranch - Date Farm – Trip Notes for 05/20/2015

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This page last updated on 03/26/2018

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(Fig. 02) 05/20/2015 Trip Notes: My friend Jim Herring and I decided to go hiking at the China Ranch Date Farm located just south of Tecopa, California. After turning onto the access road to the ranch you pass through a vary narrow slot-like canyon that that contains dozens of old gypsum mines along both sides of the road (Figs. 01 & 10). Mine shafts abound in the area around China Ranch, as the area has a rich history of mining booms and busts. Lead, Silver, Gypsum and Talc are the primary minerals that have been extracted here. These were all part of the Gypsum Queen Mine (see below for more). After stopping at the gift shop and bakery and eating an entire loaf of their delicious date nut bread, we decided to hike the Cliffs Trail (Fig 04). See below for a description. Their date nut bread alone is worth the trip 160 mile round trip dive to this desert oasis. After returning to the trailhead and enjoying a refreshing date shake, we walked along the Creek Trail, passing by several large patches of Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis californica) (Fig. 02) before reaching one of the date orchards where we just sat on a bench in quiet conversation, taking in the peacefulness of the area and enjoying the view (Fig. 03). We then walked back to the bakery and bought two more loaves of date nut bread to take home.

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The Cliffs Trail (1): From the trailhead behind the gift shop and bakery, this trail is a challenging trail  that requires hand and foot climbing over two ten to fifteen foot vertical dry falls, with a little steep climbing on loose footing at the end of the trail. Though this trail is about 2 miles or more in length (R/T), we did not climb the last of the dry falls. From the gift shop, walk straight down the canyon. When the trail forks bear left, dropping down into China Ranch Creek. The creek bed is wet and brushy, and the outlet on the opposite bank is marked with a rock cairn. One must carefully wind their way through the thorny mesquite, then across the mud flats. The trail will turn left into the major drainage between the soft, light colored clay hills on the left and the darker, hard rock mountain on the right (Fig. 05). As you follow the wash uphill you pass some very colorful geology and even a few plants (Figs. 06 thru 08). The plant in (Fig. 07) is a Desert Holly. Click here for more pictures and information ... Desert Holly (Atriplex hymenelytra). Continue climbing until you dead end at the base of a sheer vertical cliff several hundred feet high (Fig. 09). You are now in a nicely formed natural "bay", hidden away in these ancient lake bed sediments. Rather than hike the same route back we decided to cross the China Ranch Creek again and hike across the desert to the Acme siding and ore loading site and the old Tonopah and Tidewater rail bed. From here we hiked the Slot Canyon Trail back to the gift shop and bakery where we sat and enjoyed a nice refreshing date shake.

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The Gypsum Queen Mine: The deposits (Figs. 01 & 10) of the Gypsum Queen mine are located on the China Ranch in Inyo County, just southeast of Tecopa, California. Operating primarily between 1915 and 1918, the Gypsum Queen mine was made up of nearly a half dozen individual mines sites (Fig. 10). The road leading to China Ranch passes right through the middle of the bed. Because the gypsum bed deposits found here are flay-lying with much over burden, it was mined with open stopes from tunnels. The room and pillar mining used here, seen in the collage in (Fig. 11), was used extensively in California. For a time mining was carried on at the rate of nearly a thousand tons a month. The mines were closed shortly after October 31, 1917 after two men were killed in a cave in.

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The ore, seen in the collage in (Fig. 03), was transported on the Tonopah and Tidewater railroad to a Los Angeles mill that produced plaster of Paris, wall plaster and fertilizer. As a fertilizer, gypsum is used to improve penetration by water during irrigation, particularly for potatoes in Kern County. Other crops in the area of greatest use include citrus and deciduous orchards, vineyards, cotton and vegetables. The Portland cement industry in California is another important consumer of uncalcined gypsum, using between 100,000 to 150,000 tons a year. Its function is to retard the naturally fast set of Portland cement. A little more than half of the gypsum consumed by the building industry is in the form of prefabricated products, By far the most important are gypsum wallboard, lath, and sheathing board.

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Note: Every attempt is made to provide accurate information, but occasionally depictions are inaccurate by error of mapping, navigation or cataloging. The information on this site is provided without any warranty, express or implied, and is for informational and historical purposes only.

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Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument (TUSK) - Summary Page

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This page last updated on 03/31/2018

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Directions: As seen in (Fig. 02) below, the Monument lies along the north edge of the Las Vegas Valley and abuts private and public lands all along the edge. Because Tule Springs Monument is a new park, there are no visitors’ centers, designated trails, facilities, or parking areas, but there is still plenty to explore. To access the monument, people can park on nearby public roads in the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, and enter the monument on foot. The "Protectors of Tule Springs", a formal non-profit corporation, suggests parking and starting a hike at either the north end of Durango (where the road ends), the end of Aliante Parkway at the monuments' southern end, Corn Creek Road at the monuments' north end, and the area referred to as Tufa Beds Trails in the Eglington Plant Preserve at the very southern end. Note the three locations labeled "Future Kiosk" (RED) on the map in (Fig. 02). The view in (Fig. 01) was taken from the N. Durango entrance point. It’s important to remember that all park resources – fossils, plants, animals, artifacts and rocks – are to remain as you find them. Federal regulations prohibit off-roading in the park and vehicles are only permitted on approved roads.

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Description: The Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, or TUSK (a seemingly strange acronym used by the National Park Service (NPS), contains the single largest assemblage of Ice Age fossils in the Southwest, spanning geologic history from 7,000 to 200,000 years past. It was established as the 405th unit of the National Park Service on December 19, 2014⁽¹⁾. It is a continuous record found nowhere else. The newly designated Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument (Fig. 02) above, it is about 27 miles long and 7 miles across, although much of it is fairly narrow, with the narrowest point, behind Floyd Lamb Park, being about 1 mile wide. The new national monument is 22,650 acres (approximately 35 square miles) in extent, stretching northwestward from urban Las Vegas and North Las Vegas approximately twenty seven miles. Its morphology was determined by the path of Las Vegas Wash, which flows southeastward from Corn Creek Flat into Las Vegas Valley and onward into Lake Mead. The monument shares its northern boundary with the Desert National Wildlife Range.

It became known by the four-month intensive study in 1962-63 that became recognized as the "Big Dig" chronicled by National Geographic. Still visible today, ten squared-off trenches run through the barren rock, the longest of which cuts more than a kilometer through the desert. These excavations, led by C. Vance Haynes, Jr., were not so much about preserving artifacts and bones as establishing a timeline. To pin down whether people and mammoths interacted, the researchers needed to know when they each lived in this place. The only way to do that was to read the rock in fine detail. For the archaeologists, the project was a bust. Over the course of two years the researchers moved an estimated 200,000 tons of sediment but could not find any clear indication of human presence more than 13,000 years old. That means people showed up after the mammoths, sloths, sabercats and other megafauna had already vanished. And even though paleontologists had better luck making fossil finds, many thought Tule Springs could not compete with the Ice Age riches of the La Brea asphalt seeps just a few hours’ drive to the southwest. The desert site was left to gun enthusiasts, who dragged out old TVs and appliances to blast apart in the wasteland.

Subsequent studies have cataloged thousands of Ice Age mammal fossils including Colombian mammoth, ground sloth, American lion, ancient camel, dire wolf, saber-toothed cat, bison and three ancient species of horse. The National Monument also supports four unique and imperiled plants, the Las Vegas buckwheat, Merriam’s Bearpoppy, the Las Vegas Bearpoppy and the Halfring Milkvetch. It also provides important habitat for the threatened desert tortoise, burrowing owls, kit foxes and several other wildlife species, which are recognized for protection under the Clark County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan. Additionally, four species of raptors utilize the Wash for meeting their habitat needs – kestrels, barn owls, burrowing owls, and great horned owls. The NPS website states it was established to “conserve, protect, interpret and enhance for the benefit of present and future generations the unique and nationally important paleontological, scientific, educational and recreational resources and values of the land."⁽³⁾.  The primary geological feature in the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument is the Las Vegas Wash. That wash is the only drainage system in the Las Vegas Hydrologic Basin. All waters in the Basin eventually flow to the Wash and then into Lake Mead and the Colorado River.

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Nevada's only national monument, it is located in the Upper Las Vegas Wash and protects part of the Tule Springs. The archaeological site is marked as Nevada Historical Marker 86 (Fig. 04) and is located within the Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs which is operated by the City of Las Vegas. The wash, also known as the Upper Las Vegas Wash is one of the feeds for the Las Vegas Wash that runs through the Las Vegas Valley and empties into Lake Mead. The wash area also includes several patches of the rare Las Vegas bear poppy. The springs site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 20, 1979. (To read, click to enlarge)

In terms of some of the most compelling paleontological and paleoclimatological research questions of the early Twenty-First Century, the monument is one of the most promising sites in North America. Such questions include: (1) How has the climate changed over the past 100,000 years and what processes have driven these changes? (2) What caused North America’s magnificent megafauna to go extinct? (3) How did ecosystems in the American Southwest respond to climate change during the Pleistocene period? (4) What can all of this teach us about responses of biological communities to climate change that is happening now?

TUSK is also an excellent place to engage the public in such questions. For example, evidence of climate change is conspicuous in the walls of the trenches left open from the 1962-63 excavation. Planning for the development and visitor enjoyment of the new national monument is just beginning. The NPS will post updates at www.nps.gov/tusk.
                                         
03/28/2018 Trip Notes: On this day Bob Croke, Cindy Pace and myself had a guided tour of the proposed area provided by Sandy Croteau VP/On-Site Chairman of POTS. This 3.4 mile hike provided information about many of the plants that we encountered along the way and a geologist provided information about the creation of the topography and the surrounding mountains. Click here for pictures and more information ... Tufa Beds Trails (TUSK) - Trip Notes for 03/28/2018.

03/07/2018 Trip Notes: On this day, Bob Croke, Jim Herring, and I drove to the Aliante Pkwy location to enter the Tule Springs Archaeological Site in the TUSK National Monument in search of the trenches dug during the "big dig". This was our second hike of this area, however, this time we had two hiking guides from POTS (Protectors of Tule Springs). Our guides were Sandy Croteau and Helen Mortenson, shown above. These two people provided us with a wealth of information on the past and current archaeological diggings in the this area. Click here for some pictures and information ... Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument (TUSK) - Trip Notes for 03/07/2018.

02/21/2018 Trip Notes: On this day, Bob Croke, Jim Herring, Ron Ziance, and I drove to the Aliante Pkwy location to enter the Tule Springs Archaeological Site in the TUSK National Monument in search of the trenches dug during the "big dig". As we entered the monument, we headed out across the barren Las Vegas Wash in a north westerly direction. Once we reached the power line we turned west until we encountered what we thought look liked a large trench that ran north to south. Though we never found any fossils, we did find some seashell and snails. Click her for some pictures ... Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument (TUSK) - Trip Notes for 02/21/2018).

10/30/2012 Trip Notes: On this day we decided to enter the area now known as the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument before is was established as a national monument. As we headed out towards the wash, we passed a series of arroyo bluffs. As we hiked further out, these arroyo walls began to slump into much gentler slopes that hide any possible details of the sediments and fossils. Along the way we crossed several areas that provided evidence of flowing/standing water no more than a two to three weeks ago. After about a mile out, we came upon the corner of a wooden fence line that stretched at least a 1/2 mile in opposite directions. We were unable to find the location of the 60’s paleontological dig or any fossil remains. Click her for some pictures ... Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument - Trip Notes for 10/30/2012.

The Creation of a National Monument(1): "The 113th Congress did an amazing thing shortly before adjourning in late December of 2014: it passed a bill. Specifically, it passed the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument Act, which created a new National Park Service unit on the northern margin of Las Vegas Valley. This legislative action was the culmination of several years of political spadework by a coalition of people in Southern Nevada. The political effort was coordinated by the National Parks Conservation Association, with strong support from the Sierra Club and many other groups. Several local officials, especially Mayor John Lee of North Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, lobbied hard for the passage of this bill, hopeful that a fossil-themed national monument would broaden Southern Nevada’s tourism base and encourage non-gaming visitors to linger longer in the Las Vegas area before heading off to the Grand Canyon, Zion, Death Valley, or other destinations. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) and his staff took the lead in drafting the Tule Springs bill, and Congressman Steven Horsford (D-Nev) played a key role in shepherding it through the recalcitrant House Subcommittee on Public Lands. The National Park Service―all the way up to Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell―was supportive of adding Tule Springs to their portfolio, especially because it is adjacent to an urban setting, thus providing opportunities for a national-park experience for people who may never visit national parks in more remote settings.        NPS paleontologists are excited because Tule Springs will be the first NPS unit―of which there are more than 400―specifically dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Pleistocene Ice Age fossils. The bill was cosponsored by the entire Nevada congressional delegation (three Democrats and three Republicans-not known for holding hands and singing kumbayah), and endorsed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval and the Nevada legislature. There was no organized opposition. And, oh yes, the site is loaded with Ice Age fossils, going back in time at least three times as far as those at the famous La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. With all of this going for it, future visitors to the national monument might think that its creation was a veritable “walk in the park.” They would be wrong.                 Up to the day Congress passed this bill, its fate was uncertain. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex), for example called the bill (which transferred the management of a parcel of federal land from the Bureau of Land Management to the NPS) a “massive land grab,” and he tried to prevent its passage. With time running out for the 113th Congress, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found a way to finesse the Tule Springs bill through the Congressional juggernaut. He attached it to the must-pass Defense Appropriation Act, with the justification that it protected a critical, low-altitude, flight corridor for Nellis Air Force Base. Nellis AFB was, in fact, a valuable ally in promoting the creation of the new national monument. In the early 2000s, with the Southern Nevada economy booming, much of the now-protected land was being considered for sale by the Bureau of Land Management to developers, at the request of the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. Nellis AFB training exercises sometimes call for their pilots to fly low over the Tule Springs corridor, which would not be compatible with residential development. So the Air Force was understandably concerned. As events unfolded over subsequent years, Nellis quietly supported the non-development of the area. As it turned out, the support of the Air Force for the Tule Springs bill played an especially important―perhaps crucial―role in allowing the bill to be attached to the Defense Appropriation Act. The negotiation of military over flight protocols for the new national monument is a detail to be addressed later.                        When the land was being considered for disposal by the BLM, a required paleontological survey turned up more than 400 previously unknown vertebrate fossil sites. Also, a biological survey revealed the presence of two sensitive plant species: bearpaw poppy (Arctomecon californica) and Las Vegas buckwheat (Eriogonum coymbosum var. nilesii). The BLM withdrew the land from immediate disposal, formed a community stakeholders’ group to explore management options, and commissioned a team of land-use consultants to provide professional advice. Then in 2007 and 2008 the economy tanked, hitting the Las Vegas housing market especially hard. The pressure to develop the BLM land dissipated faster than the pressure in a New England Patriots’ football, and momentum began to build within the environmental community to think big about the future of the fossil-rich Tule Springs land.                                The concept of a fossil beds national monument began to gain traction, and a citizens’ group―Protect Our Tule Springs (POTS)―was created by energetic local residents to beat the drum. These POTS activists were critical in galvanizing public interest in the fossil resources of Tule Springs, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions to legislators, speaking to community groups and school kids, and button-holing legislators at every level of government. Giant casts of mammoth teeth were touched by countless people as they listened to the pitch for protection of the fossil-rich, crescent-shaped parcel on the northern edge of Las Vegas. Upon hearing about the Ice Age behemoths that populated Las Vegas Valley and were fossilized in the Tule Springs area, the most common response was “I had no idea.” POTS partisans sometimes joked that the national monument they were advocating should be named the “I-Had-No-Idea National Monument.” Far from a “walk in the park,” the creation of Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument was contingent upon this sequence of events, any one of which could have gone differently and scuttled the effort. Had the Tule Springs bill not finally squeaked through in the waning hours of the 113th Congress―and the waning hours of Harry Reid’s influence as Senate Majority leader―I’m doubtful that it would ever have been created at all.”

The Park’s Archaeological History:  More than 80 years ago, when most of Las Vegas was clustered around Fremont Street, archaeologists began to unearth animal remains at Tule Springs.  In 1933, the Tule Springs Expedition, led by Fernley Hunter, was the first major effort to explore the archaeological importance of the area surrounding Tule Springs. Fernley, of the American Museum of Natural History, found a bit of charcoal associated with bones of extinct camel, horse and bison. Later that year Mark Harrington and Ruth Simpson of the Southwest Museum found more charcoal and bones from camels, horses, mammoths and giant sloths sticking out of the desert's surface. Harrington and Simpson were hoping to find evidence that early humans had roamed the area 30,000 years ago, but the charcoal could not be related to people. When Simpson returned to the site in 1956, she found a scraper that was radiocarbon-dated older than 23,800 years. But scientists could not establish that the scraper had been left by humans that long ago.      Bill Gilcrease discovered the lower molar of a Colombian mammoth on a northeast corner of his land (The Gilrease Orchards) in the early 1960s. A 30-person team from New York, Nevada and California, under the auspices the Nevada State Museum, dug for more than four months from October 1962 until February 1963. Radiocarbon dating had just been developed as a technique for dating such things as charcoal and bones. This group of scientists wanted to use the new dating technique to find out when humans had arrived in North America. They confirmed that the area was home to Ice Age species as well as early North American Paleo-Indian peoples. Richard Shetler of the Nevada State Museum, arranged "the Big Dig" and directed the project. Geologist C. Vance Haynes studied the sedimentary layers, using radiocarbon dating to determine their ages. Animals discovered included ground sloths, mammoths, prehistoric horses, American camels and the first giant condors found in Nevada. For nearly a quarter million years — until around 7,000 years ago — this arid desert wash was a lush wetland, home to some of the most massive and unusual species ever to walk the continent. Dense with fossils of Ice Age lions, herds of bison, saber tooth cats and gargantuan Columbian mammoths, Tule Springs tells the story of survival, adaptation, evolution, and extinction.

Endangered Plants and Area Wildlife (2): The Upper Las Vegas Wash supports four unique and imperiled plants. The Las Vegas buckwheat in the area is a species that has been petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The Nevada Natural Heritage Program has also identified three additional plant species in the area - Merriam's bear poppy, the Las Vegas bearpoppy, and the halfring milkvetch - as imperiled. The area also supports Joshua trees and several species of cacti.                                    The Upper Las Vegas Wash provides important habitat for the threatened desert tortoise, burrowing owls, kit foxes and several other wildlife species that are recognized for protection under the Clark County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan. Four species of raptors utilize the Wash for meeting their habitat needs - kestrels, barn owls, burrowing owls, and great horned owls. The red-tailed blazing star bee, a little known or described species, is found in the Wash ecosystem and is considered as imperiled due to its rarity.                                      Proposed boundaries for the new fossil beds national monument abut the Desert Wildlife Refuge, home to more than fifty-two species of mammals, including desert bighorn sheep, and thirty-one species of reptiles and amphibians. The springs at the Corn Creek headquarters of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, immediately adjacent to proposed boundaries for the fossil beds national monument, have refugia for the Pahrump poolfish, a species protected as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act, as well as the Corn Creek springsnail, a species recognized as critically imperiled due to extreme rarity and immediate threats to its existence. References:                            (1) March 2015 Issue of Desert Report – Article “The Mojave Desert's Newest National Park Service Unit - Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument” by Steve Rowland. Note: Steve Rowland is a paleontologist on the faculty of the University of Nevada Las Vegas. http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DR_Spring_2015.pdf                                      (2) Center for Biological Diversity, FACT Sheet: Why the upper Las Vegas Wash (Tule Spring) should be managed as a fossil beds national monument, by the National Park Service. www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/TuleSprings.pdf (3) Geology and Paleontology Explorations and Resources at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument - Prepared by the Geologic Resources Divisions of the National Park Service - 2015 https://www.nps.gov/tusk/learn/historyculture/upload/Hardy_Bonde_Final-Report.pdf  Info - Geologic Resources Inventory Scoping Summary Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, Nevada - Prepared by Rebecca Port October 16, 2015 & Geologic Resources Divisions of the National Park Service https://www.nps.gov/tusk/learn/historyculture/upload/TUSK_GRI_scoping_summary_2015-1016.pdf Return to ... Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs

Bootleg Canyon - Summary Page

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This page last updated on 01/09/2018

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(Fig. 02)

Directions: From Las Vegas, drive out to Boulder City and the Bootleg Canyon Area. From the stoplight near downtown, make a left turn on Highway 93 and continue eastbound on Highway 93 for 0.7 miles. Watch for a “River Mountain” trailhead sign on the left and turn left onto a short access road that leads to a parking lot with spaces for 25 vehicles. Park here; this is the trailhead.

Area Description: Pretty much everything shown in (Fig. 02) is referred as "Bootleg Canyon". More specifically, Bootleg Canyon is a very large canyon that is surrounded by two mountains; Red Mountain on the west and Black Mountain on the east. Though there is a dirt road that runs up the back side of Bootleg Canyon, the River Mountain “Hiking” Trail runs directly up the canyon between these two mountains and is the only hiking trail to the top of the canyon providing access to both the Red Mountain and Black Mountain trails. In addition, Bootleg Canyon Road and the trail to the Red Mountain Summit is the route to the top of the four zip lines that run down the southwest side of Red Mountain. River Mountain Trail Hike:  This moderately strenuous trail goes through a very colorful narrow-ish wash. At the saddle, the top of this trail, a trail sign indicates that the Red Mountain Trail runs to the left, while the Black Mountain Trail runs to the right. This actually is the beginning of these two trails. The well-maintained trail is 2-1/4 miles to the saddle with approximately 800 feet of elevation gain. On 05/07/2015 I actually came here today with my friend Jim Herring (Fig. 01) thinking we were going to meet up with the rock-hounds from the Henderson Senior Facility. As I learned later, they ‘cheated’ and drove up the Bootleg Canyon Road to the top, while we hiked the 2.25 miles up the River Mountain Trail. From the trailhead at the parking lot, bottom right of (Fig. 02), the trail runs past the kiosk going northwest between a cement-lined flood control channel and a wall at the edge of a housing development, After passing the housing development, the trail bends to the left and runs more-or-less west past a flood control retention basin, then continues northwest into the desert heading towards the canyon that separates the Red and Black mountains. In the main canyon, this well defined trail runs on a bench on the west side of the wash where the footing is quite solid, middle of (Fig. 01). From the bottom of the canyon wash it runs straight up the bench to the bottom of the canyon where it begins switch-backing up the steep hillside (Fig. 02). The pictures in (Figs. 03-05) were taken along the way. After the first three long switchbacks, it then makes a long run up the canyon to a long series of eight or nine switchbacks, until it crests out at a saddle on the ridge (Fig. 06), the trailheads for both the Red and Black mountain trails, top left of (Fig. 02). Once we reached the top of the saddle, the wind gusts were fierce. From here we decided to head towards Red Mountain hoping to find the senior group, however by the time we reached the parking area, they had already decided to head back, probably due to the strong winds. Just a few hundred feet beyond the parking area there was a very secure gate blocking any further vehicle travel up the road to the VORTAC Microwave facility. In spite of the strong winds, we made a decision to continue hiking the Red Mountain trail (See link below).

(Fig. 03)

(Fig. 04)

(Fig. 05)

(Fig. 06)

Zip Lines at Bootleg Canyon: On 09/18/2015, my brother Tommy and I signed up for a ride on the zip line in Bootleg Canyon. Because there are actually four separate zip lines, this tour took nearly 3.5 hours. Click the following link for pictures and a full description of this adventure ... Zip Lines at Bootleg Canyon.

Black Mountain Trail Hike: On 05/30/2015, Blake Smith and I returned to Bootleg Canyon to hike the Black Mountain Trail. Because it was projected to be over 100 degrees by noontime, we decided to get an early start, leaving the house at 5:30 am. Click the following link for pictures and a full description of this hike ... Back Mountain at Bootleg Canyon.                                                             Red Mountain Trail Hike: On 05/07/2015, after hiking the River Mountain Trail, Jim Herring and I decided to continue by hiking to Red Mountain Summit. Click the following link for pictures and a full description of this hike ... Red Mountain Lookout at Bootleg Canyon.

The video clip below shows one of my brother rides. Because I have not edited this video, he doesn't show in the video until about 3/4 of the way through.

Note: Every attempt is made to provide accurate information, but occasionally depictions are inaccurate by error of mapping, navigation or cataloging. The information on this site is provided without any warranty, express or implied, and is for informational and historical purposes only.