Spin the wheel and pray: Does Las Vegas pay out as a mountain bike destination?

Welcome to Hotel Ridiculous.

You know that ideal mountain bike accommodation that’s got great bike storage and is used to dusty people with piles of gear, where you feel totally at home drying wet shoes on the porch and stuff? Imagine the direct opposite of that, and you might get the Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

We’re here as guests of the Las Vegas tourist authorities, and it’s the hotel they chose, but it’s hilariously wasted on photographer John and myself. We roll in after a couple of hours on the road with three bikes in a pickup, and we’re not allowed to bring them anywhere near the hotel. Not into the lobby, nor in a storage room, and the suggestion that we keep them in our rooms actually makes a receptionist go pale with fear. I’ve forgotten to bring a decent lock, and we don’t trust the parking garage, so it’s back to the truck to remove all the wheels and jam three bikes into the rear seats.  

Our media status, however, has triggered some silent VIP alarm. We’re ushered into a private check-in area, complete with plush furniture, artisanal snacks, and many well-tailored staff. The sight of John, whose luggage consists of a dusty Rubbermaid storage bin, being gently ushered toward the private elevator is one that will stay with me forever. 

Less bling bling, more riding.

We’re not here for pampering — fun though it is. We’re here to ride the serious array of trails that Vegas has to offer. It’s easy to forget that beyond the Strip, Vegas has over 900,000 residents, is surrounded by elevated desert on all sides, and is one of the easiest/cheapest/best-appointed places to stay in all of the USA. If you can keep your hand on your wallet and your liver in check, it might just be the secret mountain bike vacation hack you’ve been looking for. 

Escaping the heat on Mount Charleston.

It is wicked hot — over 100 degrees on the Strip. So local rider, trail advocate, and impromptu guide Jake Billings takes us up to Mount Charleston instead. It’s an hour northwest of the city, at around 8000ft elevation, and a little more wooded than the desert floor, so we have a chance to escape the roasting. 

After an excellent breakfast at Eggworks, we shuttle up to the trailhead in two trucks so we can do as much downhill as possible. We start descending straight away on Lower Showgirl.

Lower Showgirl

It’s way more lush and green than you might expect — we’re 5000ft higher than Vegas, so this is practically alpine. It’s around 83 degrees, which is hot, but nothing compared to the concrete frying pan of the city. 

Lower Showgirl is a 5.2-mile blue descent. There may not be much in the way of jumps, drops, or other technical features, but you can make this trail go black in two seconds by just staying off the brakes, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun if you do. Proper, branch-dodging, Forest of Endor stuff, with dips, rocks, and fast flat corners every other second. 

Tin Can Alley

Back when there were hundreds of construction workers camped up here to build local infrastructure, they drank a lot of beer, then threw their tin cans into the woods. So now, as you hurl down this wooded, rocky flow trail, you can occasionally see one of the thousands of rusted tin cans spiked into branches or stamped flat like roof shingles. 

That party atmosphere seems to have lingered on the trail, too. Tin Can Alley is a straight-up shot of pure singletrack joy. It’s super fast, flows like water, and has something like 200 corners from top to bottom. So it’s constantly throwing dips, rock kickers, and sharp, narrow bends into your path while also urging you to stay off the brakes and see just how fast you can go. We force Jake to risk his life for a couple of steezy jump shots, pound the cold La Croix down, and head for home like the happy little riders we are.

Round and round the ragged rock: riding Bootleg Canyon.

It feels a bit cruel to make photographer John, who  lives out of a truck, forgo the pleasures of his crisp hotel sheets at 6am, but we want to beat the heat. An hour later, we’re having coffee and eggs in the Coffee Cup cafe with Jeff Frampton, the owner of All Mountain Cyclery and our host for the day. 

We’re in Boulder City, a town expressly created to house the workers who built the Hoover Dam, and it feels a long way from Vegas. Local burger joint The Dillinger has shotguns for door handles and glass tables filled with bullet shells. The trails are in nearby Bootleg Canyon, named because Boulder was dry to keep workers sober, so they smuggled booze in from Vegas. Then when prohibition hit, the canyon filled with illegal distilleries, and they smuggled hooch back into Vegas. They do things their own way out here. 

Right away, we could tell these trails were a different proposition from Mount Charleston. This is the desert — sharp, jagged stones of all sizes, cliff faces scarred with deep red lines, and not a soft thing to fall into in any direction. Mother is a black trail that goes from the very top of the trail system, and it looks and rides like someone made it lovely and smooth, then let an angry toddler smash it with a hammer. There are raspy, tire-ruining rocks of all sizes — some loose, and some that wouldn’t move no matter how hard you rammed a toe into them. It’s spicy to descend because you can never quite be sure if or when the ground’s going to ping out from underneath you, and the canyons below are waiting. We all do a double-take at a blind corner, narrowly scraped into solid rock, that goes 90 degrees left with no room for error, and I need soothing words from Jeff before I can clear it. The rush of successfully making it down without a shattered femur is more than enough reward for the risk — what a trail! 

Once I’ve taken care of business, we head to The Dillinger for Arnold Palmers and burgers before heading back out for round two. 

In the time-honored ass-backward MTB tradition, we go straight to one of the spiciest features in the canyon with full stomachs and no warm-up. Thankfully, Jeff is both a generous host and an excellent rider and happily tows me into the steep, unforgiving rock slab several times until my performance satisfies John. It’s a hell of a section, too — the last feature on Love Canal is a perfect tight chute through huge rocks with narrow turns, followed by sudden drops and pointy fingers of rock at head height. 

Then we hook back up with Jake, Jeff leaves for the shop, and we take our chances on East Leg. This is a Blue trail that starts with a spectacular view of Lake Mead, a reservoir created by the Hoover Dam (and apparently home to an unknown number of barrels with dead people in them), before dropping down nearly 500ft over a mile and ending in some janky but fun wooden features at the bottom. It’s less terrifying than Mother, faster, and just what we need with a bellyful of burgers and a day baked in the Vegas sun. 

While we’re messing around on the drops at the end, a little kid comes barreling up to ask for help. His buddy had come off an electric scooter and torn a scab the size of a beer mat off his right knee. In a rare, possibly unique moment — I happen to have a fully-stocked first aid kit, so we sterilize his wound, bandage him up, and send him home for supper. Seconds later, a roadie accosts us at the parking lot in need of a pump, and I find the tiny electric pump I thought I’d lost and save his ass too. You’re welcome, Nevada.

Ripping the rugged Cowboy Trails.

It’s our last day in town, and we’re excited to head out to the Cowboy Trails. This trail system is right next to Red Rock Canyon, home to some milder leisure trails and about a thousand people taking photos for Instagram, but by the time we’ve unloaded and started climbing, it feels like we’ve got the whole canyon to ourselves. 

I like climbing, and I like technical climbing in particular — the more I have to concentrate on, the less I feel the climb. In all honesty, Kibbles and Bits is one of the most entertaining climbing trails I’ve ever ridden. It’s over four miles of black technical trail with a 1,000-foot ascent, and I loved every bit of it. There are tiny cute cholla that nip at your ankles. There are foot-high rock ledges and natural spines just begging to be ridden over, and the black layer of lava washes over the top of the smoother rock underneath like the patterns of an Aboriginal painting. It’s challenging and beautiful, and I want to ride it again. 

It’s all going well until Kurt — another All Mountain employee and a sterling human being — leads us to the hardest feature on the trail. It’s a 5ft, cross-slab, off-camber punch of a climb that he only makes 40% of the time. While I’m waiting for another turn, I put my foot down on some loose rock and smash my right hand into a sharp edge with my full body weight. It hurts like hell, and for the next hour, it throbs like a cartoon thumb. But there’s nothing to be done except to keep riding. 

So we head over to Boneshaker, one of the best-known descents in the system, and I take a deep breath, promise myself a whole tub of Advil, and dive in. 

Boneshaker’s no joke. Two miles of Double Black Diamond descent, with a spectacular view of Red Rock Canyon in the distance, and serious consequences if you get distracted by that view. Maybe it’s the pain in my hand, or the heat, or the spiny plants, but this is both the rawest and most exhilarating ride so far — there’s not an inch of it that’s simple. Every turn, every rock garden, every hop and twist and change in position demands 100% concentration as it steeply picks its way down the side of the canyon. The effort required to keep both hands on the bars and soak up the impact of drops is intense, and I’m grateful for a break at some huge mushroom rocks about halfway down when we stop to let Kurt do a couple of huge drops for the pics. They’re 5 or 6 feet each and have flat landings on hard rocks, but Kurt makes them look like child’s play. Thanks for the stunts, buddy.  

When it’s over, I feel that peculiar bittersweet sensation that mixes relief and disappointment. I should — and do — head for the nearest pharmacy and a bucket of ice, but I’m sorry to stop. I’ll remember Cowboy for a long time.

New trails coming to Las Vegas.

There are trails being built all around Vegas. Boulder City, Blue Diamond, Mount Charleston — they all have plans for expansion at various stages of completion. But the sheer popularity of the trails at Cowboy have prompted the authorities in Park County to put up the money and the time to build more, and soon. 

County Commissioner Justin Jones, a lifelong rider and cycling advocate, took the time to talk with me about 20+ miles of new trails.

“We’re building a mixture of green, blue, and black trails in two areas — a parcel of land west of Rhodes Ranch called South West Ridge, and Warm Springs South, which is south of Summerland. There’s going to be a bike skills park, too, and we hope it’ll be ready in the next 18 months,” said Jones.

A key element of support for new trails in the USA is the opportunity to get younger riders involved with NICA — and these new trails are no exception. Rob’s son is a rider too, and he’s got the support of many local parents who, even if they don’t ride themselves, become more vocal advocates for trail building when their kids start to compete. And that support counts when you’re asking the state for over $1M.

“It’s about $50k per mile, and we’re getting Sierra Trail Works to build it, but there’s a lot of local support,” said Jones. “The trails will be multi-use too — hikers and horses allowed — so it’s a huge benefit to thousands of local residents and the increasing number of tourists coming here to ride.”

If it were me, I’d happily fill every acre of this stunning canyon with trails, so it’s great to know that more miles are coming, particularly when there’s a solid focus on accessibility and skills for younger riders.

A reluctant farewell.

I’m sorry to be leaving a lot of things behind on this trip. The soft sheets. The desert canyons. Electric drapes. But mostly, I’m sorry to not have more time to ride here, on the countless miles of rocky trails, and to ride them with the passionate people making it happen. 

They say you need to be lucky in Vegas — I’ve never felt so lucky in my life.