Hiked Saturday, February 16. I'm back to having two additional hikes to write-up. This one was from five weeks previous to my petroglyph/Trail 100/Trail 200 hike. This would also be an example of a perfectly decent hike that was completely not what I set out trying to do. But I'll keep it short.
I trying to get to those petroglyphs I visited last week, but was relying on a book on southern Nevada hikes. Unfortunately, the directions were unacceptably vague, and I ended up walking some canyon about three miles west of where I should have been.
I still got the walking in, and it's not a horrible place to walk (if the weather's cool, which it was). But there were no petraglyphs here.
The book said to exit at Sloan, then head north on the "frontage road" on the west side of I-15. This "frontage road" is better known as South Las Vegas Blvd. I was then directed to look for a dirt road that went around a gravel pit, and to head for the brown electrical transmission towers.
I was then supposed to travel "several miles," then make a right at tower 83. Well, it turns out the numbering system is not two-digit, so the number wasn't very helpful. "Several miles" wasn't very helpful, either. So after I drove "several miles" from Las Vegas Blvd (VERY slowly, because this road is in horrible condition, and I had no business driving a sedan along any part of it), I turned around and slowly made my way back towards the substation.
On the off-chance that the area had changed substantially since the book was written, I decided to walk the trail that headed south from the substation.
After about four miles of heading generally south, sticking with the main trail at each turn, I eventually found myself heading southwest, and no longer in a canyon. Clearly, this was not the right place for the petroglyphs.
So I turned around and walked back. About halfway back to my car, I guy in a jeep stopped by and asked if I was doing okay (probably because no body else was walking this trail, and it was approaching sunset). I decided to accept a ride back to my car.
Chatted on the way back, and eventually figured out how far away I was from where I wanted to be.
About six miles total walking for the afternoon. Much was between tall, rounded hills. Some was out of a canyon, looking across some really flat areas.
In looking back at my pictures, it's interesting that one of them sort of looks like the opposite side of the volcanic plug I saw on Trail 200.
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