Redstone and Northshore Summit, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, NV

Hiked October 2 and 3, 2020. Friday, October 2, I drove up from the Los Angeles area. The goal was to get to Redstone, a trailhead in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, NV. I had to meet up with a colleague of my wife, to try to figure out why he was having trouble viewing through his telescope.

I got there with plenty of time to spare, and so ate dinner and spent some time walking around the area.

I had been there before, but apparently never made a blog post about it. This was years ago.

The third and fourth pictures in this post were from that evening. We then "did some astronomy," although I still wore a KN95 mask, because I'm cautious. First telescope viewing in a while. But no pictures of that. Probably less than 1/4 mile of wandering, and a little scrambling, on a couple of large sandstone outcroppings. I also observed what seemed like a fair-sized arch, off to the west.

The next day (Saturday, October 3), on my way to Valley of Fire State Park (a blog post, yet to come), I again drove along Northshore Road, and stopped at Redstone to walk to that arch I had seen, the day before.

There was no trail there, so I tried to take a minimum impact route, staying in sandy wash bottoms and walking on sandstone, when possible. Made it to the arch, and scrambled up to the arch.

The first shot was from the other side of the arch, shooting back from where I came.

The second shot was looking up, either before or after I climbed the arch.

The arch was maybe six feet across and less than that tall. Smaller than it appeared, from a distance. Maybe a mile or mile and a half, roundtrip. I didn't use my Alltrails thing to measure my distance or trace my actual route.

The shot from the top (and a few other shots) were with my cell phone. The scramble to the arch was short, but awkward enough that I didn't want to have to carry the extra weight or bulk, so I just headed up with my cell phone.

Before getting to Redstone on Friday, I stopped at the Northshore Summit trailhead, because I was early, and wanted to get some steps in.

I had hiked this trail once before. However, apparently, it was the same trip as my last visit to Redstone, and it didn't get blogged, either. Weird!

Alltrails gives the distance for this hike as about 1.2 miles, out and back. So, even combined, my three hikes and scrambles may not have been long enough to qualify as a regular hike.

Also while checking out Alltrails, I saw they indicated another hike, continuing from the Northshore Peak trail, called "Bowl of Fire." That trail is not signed by the NPS, and the trail is not necessarily obvious. Hard to tell in the desert, sometimes, because old paths can be persistent. In any event, if given more time, apparently, I could have continued for quite some distance, or taken an alternate route, further away from the highway.

At any rate, these were hikes from the start of the month.

As noted above, I also visited Valley of Fire State Park on that weekend. First time back there in quite some time. But I still need to blog that.

I also need to write-upa couple of visits to the Huntington. And I anticipate another hike or two this weekend, as well.

On an unrelated note, my struggles with blogspot layout continues. I had to manually insert the html for paragraph breaks. Used to be that happened automatically. More weirdness!