From the windows facing north at the house of Katie's parents or from the backyard I can always see the Las Vegas Range of mountains off in the distance. At the highest peak, the reflections from a solar panel installation create a faint but usually visible glimmer. Anywhere I go in North Las Vegas, the peak is ever present in my field of view.
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| Las Vegas Range: Gass Peak |
In my own mind, this peak and mountain have become the windmill to my inner Don Quijote. It is the eye of the great Sauron in my own epic tale. I've tried to run toward it through the expanse of desert separating it from the city, but even then I knew that ultimately wouldn't be enough for satisfaction.
After a little planning, I talked to Katie and we decided that an adventure was needed. We would drive in to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge and through the rocky desert roads to the so far unseen north side of Gass Peak and summit the mountain. This would be a hike with as much running as possible as well.
I found a resource that was tremendously helpful in planning this trip. A site called Bird and Hike has literally every area surrounding Las Vegas useful for hiking mapped, including a great guide to getting to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge and Gass Peak trail.
It took probably an hour and a half to drive to the trail. It was easy to get to since we just had to drive north on Highway 95 until the turnoff for Desert National Wildlife Range Road. This was a very rough and rocky road, and it was probably almost a requirement to drive an SUV or other vehicle with higher ground clearance.
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| Road at initial turn off |
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| Entrance to refuge |
We signed in at a check-in box, we were the only people to have signed in to the largest wildlife preserve in the lower 48 states that day. Even after 16 or 17 miles of driving around on the rocky roads we never saw a single other person anywhere. One person had signed in two days ago looking for pronghorns. Hopefully they knew where to look because although we hoped to see a bighorn sheep or some other animal, we couldn't find any. We did find animal droppings and paw/hoof prints in the snow on the mountain.
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| Sign In |
Our directions to the trailhead worked out well and we arrived, prepared to make the ascent with a Nathan X-Ceed pack and REI Flash pack with 2 liters of water for each of us and gloves / long sleeved shirts packed for later. Both are excellent to run or hike with due to their small size and light weight.
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| Katie at the trail head with Gass peak up above |
We started off running and hiking, the road quickly got steeper as we ascended and then disappeared. At that point the trail was a sometimes visible singletrack, otherwise we basically just climbed from ridge line to ridge line toward our always visible destination, Gass Peak.
Our starting elevation at the trailhead was 4910 feet, with Gass Peak being at 6,943 feet. This ascent takes place over 3.14 miles, with steep climbs separated by moderate ridge lines.
Here are some photos from our ascent in chronological order.
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| The Car |
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| The Car Again |
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| The Car Yet Again |
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| The Car is a Speck |
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| Lake Mead behind Katie in the far south |
We reached the summit after some more technical rock hopping and scrambling up some scree covered inclines. We checked out the solar panels, weather station and also found a small rock structure at the summit with an ammo box inside containing a log book for us to sign. The log book entries went back a few years, with someone else summiting a week or two ago. There was a bottled water in the box so we decided to add a cliff bar to the mountain top treasure. The views of Las Vegas, the wilderness range, Lake Mead, and Mt. Charleston were fantastic from up above.
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| Speck Car |
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| Approximate Route |
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| East |
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| South |
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| West |
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| North |
The descent was a blast, we hiked and mostly ran all the way to the bottom trailhead. The thrill of running down steep rocky slopes was definitely worth the climb. I ran a lot of downhill on the "edge" of control, sliding down snow, rocks and dirt several times. Katie even attacked the downhills, albeit a little more wisely than myself.
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| Katie barreling downhill |
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| Katie at the ridge top |
After hanging around at the summit and running the downhills fast on the way back we ended up with a total time spent on the mountain of just under 4 hours. Mileage is definitely relative as we probably covered around 6.3 miles in this time plus whatever mileage we added in going off the "offical" direct route.
Since we're used to running trails in dense forests, it is a bit of a shock to basically ignore the trails and just plot a ridge line trail any way one wants to a summit. There's little fear of getting lost when it's possible to always look back at your entire line of ascent and retrace it with little difficulty.
It was a satisfying climb, especially because the mountain can be seen pretty much anywhere in the city. Now we can look at it and think, "I climbed up that!".
We drove back to the city as the sun set and were treated to some beautifully colored skies over the mountains in the west.
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