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Las Vegas may not seem like the perfect spot for a test run for my summer trip to Northern Europe. I had a few things I needed to test out: handling a loaded packraft with my bike, my new bike bag, and my new stove. I ended up there during a winter storm, so the conditions were much closer to what I expect to face in Europe that I could have hoped for!

For the last few years I had been eyeing a section of the Colorado River just below the Hoover Dam called Blackwater Canyon. The logistics of the trip (rent a kayak, arrange a drop off and pick up on the river, figure out how to get from the airport to the river) meant that I kept pushing it off. With that in mind, this became the perfect test case for a bikerafting adventure. It’s not super secluded and the Hoover Dam is just a few hours bike ride from the Las Vegas airport. I still had to arrange a drop off because I needed a permitted outfitter to drop me off at the dam but I didn’t have to worry about getting off the river in time to meet a pick up.

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I loaded up all my gear in my new Ground Effect Body Bag (renamed Dogsbody). The bag is perfect for tourers who don’t have a place to stash a hard sided bike bag but don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding and transporting cardboard boxes on either end. It stashes down to roughly the size of a loaf of bread. I made the rookie mistake of not packing everything onto the bike before packing up. I had way too much stuff with me. I needed about four days worth of food but probably had enough to last me a month. Fortunately I had an extra dry bag with me which I lashed on top of my panniers.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Las Vegas metro area is riddled with rail trails and that the streets have wide well paved shoulders. This was the most pleasant urban riding I have experienced. I rode for roughly three hours through the desert, roughly paralleling the highway, with my lights off and allowed the full moon to light the way. The air temperature hovered around freezing but I stayed warm as I climbed the gradual grade.

After a quick but chilly descent I found a spot to camp out for the next few hours. I had to meet a guide from Desert Adventures early in the morning with my raft already inflated and all of my gear ready to go so I camped quite close to our meeting spot. It was quite cold so I fired up the stove, had a quick dinner, and cuddled up with a hot water bottle under a blanket of stars.

I was the only one nutty enough to go out that morning; a storm was rolling in and the wind would only get worse as the day went on. My guide used to own a bike shop and he was as excited as I was to see my little raft carry my bicycle for possibly the first bikerafting expedition of Blackwater Canyon. He gave me a lot of advice about the wind in the canyon and as a result I didn’t have much issue with it although it was a hard three hour paddle to cover almost four miles to camp.

I was starving by the time I got to Arizona Hot Springs. I hadn’t had much breakfast and I hadn’t been able to eat in the previous three hours because if I stopped paddling I would get blown upstream by the wind. Normally I’m lazy when it comes to cooking and simply go with meals that don’t need to be cooked. However, one aim of this trip was to test out my new Trangia alcohol stove so I fired it up for the second time in 24 hours and made myself a hot meal. The stove was easy to use, easy to clean, and didn’t require much manual dexterity which was great since my hands are always just a little too cold for fine motor control.

Arizona Hot Springs can be accessed by hiking down a canyon from the road or just a short hike up from the beach. I didn’t see any other boats on the beach so I naively believed I would have the hot springs all to myself. Considering it was a Wednesday afternoon with a big storm forecasted, I was shocked to find a dozen people in various pools as well as a few dogs who did not seem very happy to be there. I had a great time chatting with everyone there and met John, one of the caretakers of the pools. He keeps a photo blog with information about the springs and pictures of people he meets there. Try to find me!

The sun began to set, the rain started to come down, and I needed to refill my water bottle after slowly boiling in the springs all afternoon. I ate a quick warm dinner and crawled into my bivy to read for a bit, planning to hit the hot springs later in the evening. I got through a few pages of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and suddenly sixteen hours had gone by.

Although it was cold and drizzly the wind had died down so I decided to make the eight mile paddle to Willow Beach Marina as planned instead of waiting out the storm that was to hit that night. My raincoat and gloves served their job so instead of being wet and cold all day I was quite comfortable. That afternoon was a mix of “how much farther does this canyon go” and “I hope I don’t see the marina around the next bend!” Solo trips give me a lot of time to think and gently paddling down a slow moving river in a cold rain caused the internal dialogue to cover a wide range of topics. Often it was as simple as “Where is my food?” or “Where is my set of warmer gloves?”

When I turned the penultimate corner and heard the sound of power generators my thoughts immediately went back to wanting to stay in the quiet of the canyon longer. It hit me how special the two days in the canyon had been; I was the only person on the water, nothing but the sound of birds and the occasional plane overhead echoing between the canyon walls.

As I dragged my raft out of the water I began to feel cold. Not dangerously cold but I knew that I needed to get warm after being in the cold drizzly rain while paddling all afternoon. The marina was empty. I hauled my gear up to the covered porch and got to work on my favorite dinner while cold and hungry: chocolate. I let some other food soak for later because I was not in a mood to get the stove set up and running. I checked the weather forecast for the next twenty four hours and decided that spending the night at the marina, one thousand feet lower than the desert floor, was the safer option given the incoming storm. I slowly repacked everything, ate some more dinner, then fell asleep behind a fish cleaning station, thankful for a roof above my head.

My favorite desert activity is stargazing. Unfortunately, with the exception of the first night, the sky was overcast and I couldn’t see any stars. At least it made it easier to stomach the idea of sleeping in a shelter!

I woke up to see the sun shining for the first time since I left California. I began the 4 mile/1000ft climb up a dirt road out of the canyon and had to stop to strip off all extra layers for the first time this trip as I started to overheat. As I climbed I saw how open the landscape became and I was very happy with my decision to stay at the marina the night before.

Eventually I crested the canyon wall and was immediately subjected to cold strong wind. At this point I had been working hard for an hour without having had breakfast so I pulled off to the side of the highway, put on all my warm layers, and ate the oatmeal I had started soaking before my climb. I turned my phone on for the first time since launching at the Hoover Dam and made a few phone calls to let my worried family know that I made it out of the canyon and was doing just fine.

The ride to the Hoover Dam was great if you don’t mind highway riding. The shoulders were big, well paved, and free of debris. The headwinds on the downhills were quite welcome as it saved me from having to brake and the uphill sections were just steep enough to block the wind but not so long that I lost my momentum from the downhills. I saw the river on my left. The canyon walls looked so uniform from this high up. I knew I was the only person on that highway who had just seen the inside of the canyon up close and knew the rock walls weren’t as clean as they appeared from a few thousand feet away.

The Hoover Dam was incredibly busy. After seeing so few people the previous two days I was a little overwhelmed by how many people were visiting the dam. As I wandered around I ran across a memorial for the workers who died building the dam. It got me thinking about what the dam has brought to the world, what it was those workers died for. As I rode away from the dam I saw housing complexes full of lush green plants in the middle of the desert, Lake Mead, and the perpetual glow of the strip in the distance. As an outsider, it appeared to me that man’s conquest of nature was being thrown in my face, as if the unnecessarily bright lights were a way of showing the desert that she can be tamed. It occurred to me while riding over washes and past a languidly draining Lake Mead that the desert will eventually have the last laugh here as she flaunts her conquest over man without him even noticing. I rode along for hours on old rail trails in the desert, watching the sun set, relishing the dark sky, meditating on my role in this whole system.

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The Las Vegas metro area ends rather abruptly. I spent several hours riding my bike alone in the desert then was a bit shocked as I merged onto a six lane street full of cars. Eventually I made it to the strip where I met my friends who were racing the Scale the Strat race, the national championship for tower running in the US. I have raced it several times before but given my fitness I didn’t feel like shelling out that much cash to torture myself.

These race weekends often devolve into some very odd shenanigans and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas so I’ll leave you with this photo from the end of the weekend to imagine what happened after that race.