mojave trip - day 4
This post is part 4 of the "mojave-trip-2008" series:
We awoke this morning planning to spend this day & the next exploring Lake Mead National Recreation Area (which is about an hour east of Las Vegas). The drive out to Lake Mead was fairly uneventful, and we arrived at the visitor center just before 9AM. Due to the severe lack of rainfall over the past year (and even before that to some degree), the water level in the lake was ridiculously low. In places it looked to be at least 15ft below normal. The drive along the Northshore road was fairly easy, although contrary to its name, the lake isn't even visible for much of the drive. Our first hike of the day was on the North Shore Summit Trail. This trail is a really short (about a quarter mile each way) climb up to a high point which overlooks the surrounding landscape. The views are quite impressive from the top, stretching for miles in every direction, along with some awesome geologic formations immediately in the canyons below.
Afterwords, we continued on the drive northeast, with a stop at Rogers Spring, where we had lunch, and then explored the oasis. With the day barely half over, we had completed everything that we had on our itinerary for the day. After some discussion, we decided that it made alot more sense to do the only hike we had planned for the next day (the Railroad Tunnel Trail), which would then free up the entire day for doing something else, elsewhere.
This trail is just down the hill from the visitor center, and unfortunately, also behind a tourist trap hotel which heavily promotes & advertises noisy helicopter rides. Literally every 5 minutes, the entire time we were on the trail, a helicopter was taking off and flying about 50ft above our heads as it circled the edge of the lake and headed off who knows where to disturb the peace. All the same, the trail was an interesting relic. As its name suggests, the trail runs along the old railway beds and through 5 railway tunnels towards Hoover Dam. The tunnels are absolutely huge (perhaps 25ft tall), and easily 15ft wide at the base. The entire round trip hike took us just under 2 hours, and provided some nice views of Lake Mead stretching off into the distance.
Pictures are posted here and here.
This post is part 4 of the "mojave-trip-2008" series: