Calico Tanks
Red Rock Canyon NCA, Nevada
2.5 miles round-trip, moderate/strenuous
What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas: the cheerfully debauched slogan rings true. After forty-eight hours of rolling dice, spinning slots, and shuffling cards, we flee the misplaced hours and measured air of Mandalay Bay, determined to discover What Happens in the Eastern Mojave Desert, a Chunk of Sandstone’s Throw from The Strip.
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| We Are Leaving Las Vegas. |
Our destination on this blue-sky late-winter morning is Red Rock Canyon, an accessible tract of mottled rock and petrified dunescape less than twenty miles from the human histrionics, gregarious gambling, and wild, veneered bustle of Las Vegas. Even as it offers respite from Vegas, the Calico Tanks Trail will provide an aptly-named introduction to the distinctive fabric of the BLM conservation area: its human history, its jumbled geology... its wild, variegated beauty.
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| Incongrous Blocks? You Bet! |
From the Sandstone Quarry Trailhead, we follow an erstwhile road to an abandoned quarry where the Excelsior Company operated in the early 1900s. Several massive sandstone blocks remain at the site, monolithic reminders of an ultimately unprofitable extractive past.
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| Non-Roasted Agave. |
Northwest of the quarry, trail signage directs our attention to the rubble of a Native American agave roasting pit, a reasonably well-preserved prehistoric kitchen and further evidence that Human History Happened Here.
Beyond the roasting pit, the reasonably well-marked path veers to the right, dropping into a broad wash at the mouth of a canyon. Crunch, crunch, scrunch, scrunch, squish, squish: dry-ish gray gravel gives way to damp-ish white sand, then moist-ish red sand. The trail narrows, and we brush against glistening scrub oak and single-needle pine. The sky is clear and the air feels cool as our hiking boots move up the drainage.
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| A Calico Landscape. |
Before long, we learn What Happens When Official Trail Signage Disappears Here. The heretofore reasonably well-marked path ascends a sandstone ramp and vanishes into Early-March oblivion. This confusing terrace is the only point on the hike where we encounter other hikers—a pair lost and lingering on the way out, and a pair (with a dog) lost and lingering on the return hike. As we point ourselves in the direction we think we should go, we hear-but-never-see climbers, disembodied voices ricocheting off distant sheer canyon walls.
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| Surveying the Scene. |
Now is the moment to put our cards on the table, to collect our hiking thoughts, to summon common sense, to call upon route-finding skills! We survey and we scramble: pointing toward sporadic cairns and occasional cut-stone steps, we negotiate a 15-to-20-per-cent grade and proceed up-canyon.
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| Looking down the Canyon, Calico Tanks Trail. |
It becomes increasingly apparent that Precipitation in the Form of Rain and Snow Recently Happened Here. We spy dollops of snow and patches of ice in sheltered niches and shadowed nooks. Water is running briskly in the drainage, delimiting our path and making the slick rock scramble… slicker. Loose stones shift beneath our feet, and big boulders are clammy to the touch as we hoist our way up-up-up the canyon.
In finest Vegas fettle, we hedge our bets, never straying too high on sandstone or slogging too low on sandy bottom. We are focused on trajectory and footfall, and we miss the petroglyph on the north canyon wall. This is a bit of physical exertion. But it's so much fun!
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| Greenish Water. |
After a final steep-stone staircase, the terrain levels briefly and then descends sharply, improbably, to a hidden water pocket. Our reading tells us that Calico Tank is frequented by bighorn sheep, birds, frogs, and insects—that it may be dry in the summer or icy in the winter. Today, the tinaja is tranquil, full of greenish water, margined with sedges and grasses.
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| A Lofty Tank. |
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| Calico Hills, Turtlehead Peak. |
We scramble across a rocky saddle, a shelf to the south of the tank, pressing our luck and ourselves toward the Big Payoff View. Behind us, set against incomparably-blue late-winter sky: views of Turtlehead Peak and Calico Basin, a geologic concoction
infused with amalgamated iron oxide and calcium carbonate—the deep-red-blanched-white
hues of Aztec Sandstone.
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| What Happens At the Overlook Doesn't Necessarily Stay at the Overlook. |
Before us and beneath that same incomparably-blue late-winter sky, we take in the Las Vegas Valley and—look over there!—the phantasmagoric swath of windowless casinos where we began our day, where, presumably, all manner of things are happening and staying. We appreciate What's Happening Here, but we cannot stay. Soon, hiking boots and gravity return us safely to the trailhead, but not everything stays on the trail. Our hiking hearts are filled with a sense of human history, visceral beauty, physical exertion, so-much-fun... a marvelous display of color and light and geologic texture. Bet your bottom dollar.
