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| A Cloudy Morning at Lava Butte and Rainbow Gardens |
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| Lake Mead View from Ridge Crest |
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| The Old Ladder in Rainbow Gardens |
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| Starting out the Main Wash |
Due to this and that, only two of our pod were available to hike today. Ralyn and I went out to Lake Mead NRA and toured in around Lave Butte and Rainbow Gardens. We parked at mile marker 2 of Northshore Road inside the fee area and started hiking up the wide wash to the left. Although the wash forks off to the right and left, we stayed in the main wash and wiggled up to Bed Springs Junction. This junction is where the wash trail crosses a very old mining road. To the left of the junction, there are old bed springs lying up the hill and another to the right off the trail, now. These are presumably leftover junk from the days that this area was mined for gypsum in the North Rainbow Gardens Mine. Now, the gypsum in this area is mainly mined at the Pabco Gypsum Mine nearby.
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| Starting down Rainbow Gardens Canyon |
We turned to the right on the old, barely there, road and climbed on up to another flat area that leads directly up to where one of these mines used to be.
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| Rainbow Gardens Canyon |
We crossed the flat area and dropped down into the shallow wash on the other side. This is Rainbow Gardens Canyon as known by hikers in Las Vegas.
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| Yellow |
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| Ralyn in Rainbow Gardens |
Most of the times that I bring groups down through this colorful and interesting wash, I need to keep moving but, today, Ralyn allowed me to take as many photos as I liked! It was a very cloudy morning and sometimes, this decreased the multi-chrome look of the area. Other times, the lack of sunshine gave the area an interesting new look. We slowly made our way down the canyon noting that the old mining ladder was still alive and well in its depths. Near the bottom of the canyon, there is another canyon that takes a sharp turn to the right. If you go straight, you end up in the outskirts of Lake Las Vegas. If you turn into the left wash, you return to Bed Springs Junction. We took the sharp right into an ascent wash we call Ten Falls Wash. There is a little bit of dry fall scrambling inside this beautiful wash.
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| Rainbow Gardens Canyon |
We climbed up through the dry falls and came out into a wider, flatter wash, still ascending to a ridge crest across from the majestic Lava Butte and adjacent to Rainbow Gardens' Kodachrome Canyon.
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| Ten Falls Canyon |
We continued climbing until we met a trail perpendicular to our route. There is a large cairn here. We turned to the right on the trail and climbed up to the saddle where there is another large cairn as seen four photos below.
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| The Old Car Hood |
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| Climbing up to the First Cairn |
The view back is tremendous! Ladies and gentlemen, Lake Mead NRA! Not far, then, from the saddle, we stopped for a break choosing to take shelter from the wind behind some rocks on the ridge. It was a beautiful view. As we sat, we heard voices. Looking for movement, we found three hikers wandering around way below the crest. Unusual, but, wandering is sometimes most fun! They were headed for the ascent below Lava Butte. We finished our break, forgot about the other hikers and continued along the ridge crest as seen in the fourth photo below. We were concentrating pretty hard among the craggy rocks when I heard a voice about 20' from me say, "Hi!" I looked up to see one of those hikers poke his head above the crags. Surprise!!
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| View back toward Lake Las Vegas |
As it turned out, we knew one of the three hikers ... Paul E.! They were out there geocaching! Of course, the unusual route they had taken made sense now! After speaking, we all continued on our ways in opposite directions.
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| Saddle Cairn, Trail and Lava Butte |
At the end of the craggy crest, we turned to the left to follow a vague trail down to the base of Lava Butte. The vague trail led us to the right, crossing the base of the darkly varnished dacite rocks that cover the peak. This peak is actually a volcanic plug that has been eroded around its perimeter in the Horse Spring Formation.
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| Kodachrome Canyon |
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| Lava Butte from Ridge Crest |
At this point, the next section of the hike follows a more or less straight path that was previously a game trail. The trail hasn't survived but we kept our direction around and down two steep hills to the white hills in the distance. Our objective was to hike down the wash between the two white hills and on down to the next larger wash. Here, a new trail begins at the top of the hill directly across the larger wash and steeply up the embankment. At the high point of the embankment, we looked back for a great photo of Lava Butte Gardens! There are some old errant tire tracks to follow down the ridge as we continued our straight trajectory. This turns into a nice clear trail that eventually led back to the wide main wash where we began the hike. The last ridge trail is a new addition to the Lava Butte Gardens route. We had a lot of fun today and enjoyed watching the clouds drift away!
Stats: 6 miles; 1050' gain; 3.75 hours
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