A Las Vegas I Never Knew Of

Who doesn't know about Las Vegas, right?  Well, it turns out there is a lot about the Las Vegas area I had no clue of.

Our friends, John and Denise from the North Rim came by one morning to take us around and show us the sights.  They were naming off nearly a dozen different places that surrounded Las Vegas but unfortunately with the government shutdown they could only point at most of them from a distance and tell us what we were missing.  But there was at least a couple of places that we could get close to.  One of them was Mt. Charleston.  No more than 45 minutes from where we had the camper parked there is a mountain with enough elevation that it had a developed ski slope and ski lodge.

In my last blog I mentioned a storm that had been hanging over Mt. Charleston.  That storm dumped up to 7 inches of snow on the ski area.  That view from our campground makes the slopes of the whole Spring Mountain Range where Charleston Peak is look like the desert landscape of the valley below.  The ground appears to be bare save some cacti here or there and some sparse brush.  But only minutes after turning off of highway 95 we're back into ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and bristlecone pine.  Nothing looked like anything I had expected when thinking of Las Vegas.

Small valley in the Spring Mountain Range.

Charleston Peak, 11,912 feet.

We got out and walked a short trail near the ski slopes.  It was weird, after being in the desert for the last several days and just minutes before, it was a little disorienting to be standing with my feet in snow and looking at a chair lift.

We drove a good deal of the roads that were open in the Spring Mountains.  There were some quaint campgrounds just off to the side of these roads. 

You can tell that these places are accustomed to being full-up, it was eerie seeing everything empty and barricaded.  If we were to come back here to camp we would have to do it in a tent.  I did not see anywhere that our 5th wheel would begin to fit.

Regardless, we would come here again.  Temperatures here on the mountain run about 20 degrees cooler than in the valley and there is enough vegetation to keep the dirt on the ground when the wind blows.  Hiking trails are numerous and run from easy to difficult.