On every vacation, there is always a pinnacle day. When all the other memories of your trip fade away, this one day will forever be etched in your memory. For me, no other day was as special, as the day I spent hiking at the Spring Mountain National Recreation Area.
Located just 30 minutes from downtown Las Vegas, Spring Mountain is a nature lover’s 316,000-acre dream. As the car carried my husband and I through winding mountain roads the temperature soon turned a pleasant seventy-two degrees. It seems a bit odd once you arrive at the top of the mountain. Here you are staring at rising snowcapped mountains in a place known for its desert beauty. We stopped at the visitor’s center, where the staff could not have been more pleasant and helpful. We grabbed the entire stack of hiking maps and set off to take some pictures. We stopped at several scenic points to admire the vast expanse of pine and aspen trees as various birds flew happily between the branches. During the winter months the mountains are used for skiing and it is amazing to see the amount of devastation inflicted to the trees caused by various avalanches.
After much deliberation, we decided on a hiking trail. The great part about Spring Mountain’s hiking maps, is that they give you the accurate amount of miles for each hike. Also listed is the difficulty of the path and the approximate length of time it will take you. This was extremely helpful as we are only novice hikers and need as much information as possible. We decided on the Fletcher Canyon Trail. It was listed as “moderate,” which seemed doable, and it also promised an interesting water feature at the end.
The beginning of Fletcher Canyon is very similar to most nature trails. Clear paths lead the way through lush green pine trees, filling your lungs with the scent of Christmas. I must admit we were disappointed at first. The map had promised water all along the trail, but all we saw were dried up rock beds. Finally about half way through the trail we heard the faintest trickling of what sounded like water. It was so exciting, almost like finding a treasure. The rest of our hike was accompanied by the sound of water splashing playfully over rocks. After a very mild walk, you are finally thrust into the rock bed itself, where you must scramble on top of precariously slippery rocks. This is where it is essential to have good footwear. You would be incapacitated if you wore flip-flops or some other impractical shoe. I also found it helpful to walk sideways, as it seemed to provide better balance and prevented me from slipping head first into the rocks.
Once past the rock bed, you find yourself immersed in a limestone canyon. The walls loom above at almost two hundred feet. It was slightly eerie as each walked upon stone sent up a resounding echo. For a while I thought someone was behind us as I kept hearing a sort of scrunching noise. Finally I realized that it was the echo of the water bottles and twizzlers bouncing around in my backpack. You feel a strange sense of isolation and abrupt quite seems to make you move more slowly, feeling that somehow you are disturbing someone or something. In certain places where the water still flowed, tiny wild flowers bloomed. Compared to the stark white gray walls and floor, their colors of yellow, pink and purple radiated with ferocious brightness. We didn’t even talk, but walked on slowly immersed in our own solitude.
Our secludedness was finally broken by the sound of loud rushing water. We hurried our pace until we came to the object that will forever be implanted in my mind. It was a chute of water or I guess a waterfall if you could even call it that, lovingly carved out of a limestone rock by fresh spring water. When we were showing our vacation pictures to others one person commented, “that’s it.” I had to bite my tongue. I guess they were not there to see the clear spring water running freely down a smooth carved limestone chute. To think of how long it has taken the water just to carve out the stone and how it will continue to work carving and eroding long after I have seen it. It was nature and science at its best.
Whenever I am very stressed, I take my mind back to that day with the silence and seclusion of the limestone canyon and the bright vibrant flowers. I imagine that I am at the end of the canyon and the only sound I hear is the rushing of cool spring water through limestone. I think these experiences are what vacations are all about. The memories and experiences we take with us to help us through the mundane everyday part of our lives. I know that I will always take Spring Mountain with me and I hope you will consider experiencing it for yourself.