I am not sure why I find that there are some interesting canyons around the Las Vegas area but they indeed exist. The black canyon area have some very interesting canyons that take people through hot springs and opportunities to even rappel down into pools of hot spring water! This canyon is located in the Calico Basin side of The Red Rock just 10 minutes outside of Las Vegas.

Not to my Surprise, we had to park on the side of the street as the parking lot was full of rock monkey, trail hikers, and boulder grabbers though out this 3.5 mile loop trail.

We headed out on the obvious dirt trail passing by groups of climbers bouldering on the 2 story stones located just off the trail.  The bouldering routes appeared to range in difficulty as the climbs grunted and cheered when one of their own broke through a crux.  

What is nice about this location is there are a lot of routes and admission appeared to be free. So a nice Sunday afternoon hike or a climb can be found here in the Calico Basin and going through gateway canyon was easy to find and follow as we worked our way up through gateway canyon itself.

I brought my older camera with me as we started to work up the canyon, the sand stone layers turned into ice cream swirls of red, pink and a cream colored white like a mosaic of paint swirling around like paint on a spin art machine. This was surprisingly interesting to see how the layers of sandstone petrified into the rock to create these designs as we climbed up tot he top of the canyon. Along the way we met a British Air Force REPR pilot that joined us for the hike through the canyon. 

Eventually we could see some climbers on a few fixed routes to our right as we neared the top of the canyon and the most interesting part of the hike.

The canyon came to a dry fall that we climbed around and we soon found ourselves in a rather beautiful candy cane like canyon with clearly defined colors of red and white in a smooth meandering but very short slot.

We reached to the saddle after enjoying this candy store canyon we just walked through for a view of the valley below and a piece of Las Vegas that could be seen from where we were standing.

The canyon took a couple hours of hiking with some stops that we made along the way but overall, the canyon route is a great way to get out and visit some interesting and colorful red rock.

We will have to come back shortly and get a grip on some of the boulders for a Sunday afternoon workout.