Sunday with Sheebie at the Wash

Friends and Kitties!

My name is Sheebie, and I'll be your tour director today.

We're going to go down to the Las Vegas Wash and look around at some of the improvements the Clark County Park Service is installing.

We live in Calico Ridge, and if you follow along Lake Mead Parkway we live on the last street on the right.  Across the street from us is desert--where the City of Henderson is building the new park and trail head.  The trail will head north down to the wash.

View Larger Map

The entire Las Vegas Valley drains into the wash (when it rains) and the treated effluent from the various sewage treatment plants also feed the wash--which guarantees flow all the time!  heh.  It's a beautiful area to hike and the trail system is tremendous; there's over 65 miles of paved trails.  Our area is one of the last to be linked because we are almost as far as you can go without going into Lake Mead. 

So the other evening Scott and I took a little tour down to the wash in the Explorer (aptly named) to...um...explore!

After a little four-wheeling through scrub desert we came out on an as-yet-unpaved road, heading north.

In the distance is a new rest area and lookout.

Scott scaled this mighty peak to get some photos from the top!

Here's what he saw--I'm in the car being a lazy bum.

You can see the water on the left.

From the fence by the wash looking south.

Our house is on the other side of these mountains.

We drove west along the wash for a mile or so.

There is an group of citizens who do lots of maintenance and remediation of the land around the wash, removing invasive species (mainly tamarisk) and planting native ones like the reeds in the middle of the stream. 

 Years of uncontrolled water release has badly eroded the wash so the County is placing riprap along the banks and installing dams to slow the water down.  The piping above the water is for bank filtration; water from the wash will be pumped up for native plant irrigation where it will trickle back into the stream, removing solids and slowing the velocity.

The fence on the right is at the north most edge of the rest area.

ARTSY PHOTO!

We're traveling east now, away from the rest area.

In the distance is Lake Las Vegas Resort, and MY volcano, Lava Butte, is the rounded black hump.

A little further down the road we saw some guys getting ready for a hike, they had some major gear, they may have been planning on camping!

Do you see the water?

This spot has been remediated for a few years now, you can see how beautiful it is!  There's reeds and wildflowers and birds galore.  I can't wait for it all to look like this.

Dams slow the water down and allow it to form the pond in the preceding pic--you can see a few of them on the aerial map. 

What a dichotomy; running water in the desert.

I sure hoped you enjoyed our little tour today!  If you ever visit Vegas, give me a holler first and I'll take you to see the wash, in person.

Happy Sunday!

xx  Sheebie  xx