Red Rock Conservation Area: A great place to climb, hike, explore, view, and reflect. And a little dangerous, if you choose.
Turtlehead Peak
When I say that, it really makes it sound like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t. This was only the second time in my 12 years living in Las Vegas going up to Red Rock (and getting out of the car).
Which is kind of sad, really. The fact that there’s this place called Red Rock just minutes away from our city is so cool. This beautiful museum of 600 million years of natural history, preserved beneath the Pacific Ocean – now preserved by us humans – a geological classroom of limestone and volcanic ash – faultlines colliding millions of years ago to create dramatic cliffs and beautiful surreal rock structures. You can look around here almost see the violence of the natural Earth. And we can just… go there.
Actually, Las Vegas is surrounded by protected land. Check out this map.
But anyway we hadn’t gone there. Until this weekend. Further, I definitely would NOT consider ANY of us to be even AMETEUR hikers. Yet for some reason, we thought that these credentials qualified us for the only trail in Red Rock labeled “strenuous.”
And it was. There were areas that we learned consisted of ‘technical scrambling.’ Red Rock had these signs at the beginning of the trail guiding the way, then the signs downgraded to spray-painted dots on rocks. Then eventually the dots just stopped. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. Although right at that moment, we take a break next to a dude doing the same hike we were, but carrying a one-year-old on his back. So…
The big sign downgrade happened at the “saddle.” Funny, we joked about running into a mountain sherpa, then we definitely ran into this guy that might as well have been our mountain sherpa. Except he was just some regular looking dude with a baseball cap, a gut, and a tucked in golf shirt – definitely to this day a popular fad of the baby boomer generation. He was super nice and obviously knew a thing or two about Red Rock, and told us all about where to go and which way to come back down.
It was about an hour and a half up. At the top, views in every direction. In one direction, it looks back into the Red Rock Canyon; and the other way, into the Las Vegas Valley.
BEAUTY
I couldn’t have green-screened it better!
Beauty is interesting, isn’t it? It’s completely arbitrary, right? It’s this thing that’s programmed in us for one of two reasons: to help us with our survival, or to help with the survival of our species.
- We find babies beautiful because if we didn’t, they wouldn’t last very long. They’re annoying. And needy.
- We find certain attributes of the our sexual partners attractive because those attributes signal to us that they’re a healthy person ideal for childbearing.
- We like colorful things because they used to signal edible fruits. In modern times, bright, colorful things probably mean kids toys – surprise – or you’re at Harrah’s. (‘Yey, beads! $15 for yard glasses of frozen margarita! I’m having so much fun!’)
- And why is Red Rock beautiful? What’s beautiful about the view from tops of mountains? The ability to see your enemy coming from very far away.
There was a little fisherman’s box at the top for people to leave little trinkets that marked their presence, and someone had written on a rock ‘the path less traveled.’ For some, it’s not about leaving one giant legacy to survive them, but a thousand tiny ones.
Someone died on this same trail like a month later. No kidding.
On the way down, we decided that with a couple hours experience, we’re now professional mountain scalers, and we went off trail. Maybe it was the weed. Straight down into the valley, through brush and over loose rock.
We were on one side of a valley, and opposite us was the trail we came up on. We could see people walking the trail on the other side. I’m pretty sure they were pointing at us saying, “Look, there’s dudes over there. Holy crap, that doesn’t look safe. Should we notify someone or something?”
But we survived Red Rock. And I’m pretty sure I complained a lot. But I’m glad I did it. I’m even more glad I didn’t get eaten by a snake or something.
