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| - 5 stars for history. How lucky are we that we have 4000 year old petroglyphs right in our backyard. Literally. It's at the south end of town, passed Inspirada.
A few years back attempted to find the trailhead by following the BLM directions that starts off LV Blvd, south of the M, well we followed the directions to a T, and they took us to a power plant in the middle of nowhere. (thank you very much dept of interior) I decided to wait until I could find someone that had done the trail before and just go with them. The few times I've hiked Black Mtn, there is a trailhead for Sloan Canyon, but it is for the entire conservation area, not just the petroglyphs area. Finally, 2 years later, I was able to find this place and it's A LOT easier to find than I thought it was. This time I didn't have a HVC, so we parked at Esselmont Park in the heart of Anthem, and followed the utility road a few miles, passed the water detention basin, until we came upon the trial head. This did add about 4 miles RT to "hike", but it's the only way to do this if you don't have a HCV.
I put hike in quotes, I would call this more of a walk. It's totally flat, barely any elevation change, and only a few spots of minimal scrambling over some dry waterfalls. The entire hike is through a dry wash. It's all rock and some sand.
Once you come upon the area where the rock art panels are, you can explore and check out the panels on both sides of the wash. They're well preserved. It's pretty impressive.
If you keep walking south on the wash, there is a trail that continues through the conservation area. There were a few turn around points, so you could make this into a 5, 7, or 9 mile hike. We ended up doing 12 miles only because we kept going farther back into the area (and burning off holiday calories).
The great thing about this is, no permit needed, well maintained trail, close to home and a crazy piece of history. Other side of Vegas. Love it.
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