A letter from a local
Turn your back on the Strip. Look west.
Red Rock Canyon is thirty minutes from the middle of the city — two thousand sandstone routes, world-class bouldering, and a scenic loop that glows at sunrise. From October to April I climb more here than I did living anywhere else, because the weather simply never cancels.
Mt. Charleston pulls a genuine alpine escape out of the desert — 45 minutes to trailheads at 8,000 feet where it's twenty degrees cooler, and Lee Canyon's little ski hill runs all winter. Cottonwood Valley's mtb loops and Bootleg Canyon's downhill are both inside forty minutes.
Living here is a cheat code people refuse to believe: no state income tax, cheap houses, a 24-hour airport — and the best winter climbing weather in America. Let them not believe it.
— Jorge