Fossil Ridge/Cowboy Canyon

As I’ve already stated, this is one of my favorite hikes in the Red Rock Canyon/Blue Diamond Hill area – especially in the spring! I may also have a fondness for this particular place because the first time I hiked it with my friend Julie and we zigged when we should have zagged and we spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how the heck to get off of Blue Diamond Hill.  We found a burro trail that led us down some other canyon and back to our cars and to this day our totem animal is the ASS.  Anyway, today I “led” some friends and new comers on this hike in some of the most beautiful weather Las Vegas has seen this year – cool, mostly sunny, with a very light breeze. In other words PERFECT hiking weather!

The beginning of the hike

There are many positives to this hike.  1) For little effort there is a sense of being somewhere remote.

2)  The views of Red Rock Canyon  from inside the canyon and atop Fossil Ridge are wonderful, making for some of the best sunrise (or anytime) pictures in the area.

The views of Red Rock from this hike are fantastic!

Mender in Cowboy Canyon

3)  There’s abundant plant life from cacti, to various grasses and shrubs, to yucca and wildflowers (at least in spring).  We were in luck because the wildflowers were in bloom – yucca, indian paintbrushes, and bunch of others in white, purple, and yellow.  It also looked like it was almost time for the cacti to bloom – which prompted me to start calculating when I could return in the next few weeks.

Indian Paintbrushes!

4) There is also plentiful wildlife on this hike – birds, butterflies, squirrels, bats… yes bats!  I’ve done this hike at dusk and the bats are darting about everywhere.  Very cool!  Additionally, there is a Great Horned Owl that calls Cowboy Canyon home – a little spooky when you hear its call, but also SUPER COOL!

5) Scrambling -  love it.  And I love it even more when the possibility of cracking my skull open is minimal.  There’s a good amount of minimal risk scrambling on this hike, so if you’re into it you’ll really enjoy this hike too.

6) Fossils.

7) Did I mention the views?

Amazing!

In my previous post on this hike I rated the difficulty 2/5…….2/5 based on the-crazy-hiker-man Branch Whitney scale.  And I’ve done this hike with friends in 1 hour and 2o minutes – yes, my friends and I are strong(ish) hikers, but I generally hike at a moderate pace so that I can take in the scenery and keep oxygen flowing to my vital organs.  Today I had to reevaluate this rating because a gentleman with lung problems (previously unknown to me) had quite a bit of shortness of breath during the canyon portion of the trek.  This slowed us down a bit (but really, who cares, IT WAS BEAUTIFUL) and my BFF Kyle (also the aforementioned Julie’s brother) ended up finding a short cut up to Fossil Ridge to start the level/down hill portion of the hike sooner rather than later.  SO, I’m extremely grateful to Kyle and that everyone made it out on their own two feet and not by helicopter.  AND I learned a bit about rating difficulty of future hikes. So this one I would bump up to a 3/5 on the difficulty scale.

Thanks Kyle - you cheeseball!

For directions to the trail head and a general description of this hike see my previous post.