The city of Henderson is just 16 miles from downtown Las Vegas.  It not a place you naturally associate with cycling,  but in fact, Henderson is home for two outstanding bike trails – The River Mountains Loop Trail and the associated Historic  Railroad Tunnel Trail.

When living in southern California,  we occasionally would to head to Vegas for a weekend.   Often we would pack our trikes along with us, and then head over to these trails during the day.  Mac even came with us once.  We always had an amazing time and totally enjoyed the rides.

The River Mountains Loop Trail

The River Mountain Loop Trail is a 35 miles paved loop trail that connects the towns of Henderson and Boulder City to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.  We have ridden this trail twice – once on Christmas weekend in 2011, and again Thanksgiving weekend of 2014.    This place gets seriously hot during the summer months, so we suggest October – March for riding these trails, otherwise the heat might be too much.

On both our trips the weather was perfect.    It can start out a little chilly in the winter months in this part of the country (about 44 degrees F),  it quickly warms up to low 60’s.   It was sunny and the sky was clear – you can see from the photos how unbelievably blue the sky was! I felt like I was riding in a postcard.

The trail has been under development for much of the last 20 years, and has only been fully completed since 2012.  On our first trip in 2011, we were not able to complete the full loop.  But upon out return last year the entire loop was open and we rode the full circuit.

All I can say is – Wow! What an amazing trail. It’s got some hills – some of them steep, and one really big one. The lowest point on the trail is around 1200 ft, the highest around 2700 ft. It is a challenging ride, but not a complete killer. Total elevation change is about 3900 feet – so there is a lot of rolling up and down.

We rode the trail clockwise, starting in Henderson. Traveling that direction, there is one sustained climb between the lake and Boulder City – about 7 miles long, with total elevation change of about 1200 feet.   This climb was a real killer when pulling Mac in his trailer!  The rest of the hills are all pretty short. There are lots of curvy, twisty sections with switchbacks going up and down. This makes it a ton of fun on the trikes.

There are helpful trail markers every 1/2 mile along the trail to let you know how far you have gone.

Much of the trail is a bit ‘in the wild’ – there are not a lot of convenient stores and only three restrooms that I saw on the entire loop.

The trail map shows several other restrooms – but we didn’t see them and we were looking. The trail runs out to the shores of Lake Mead, and there are loads of sweeping vistas of the Lake and the surrounding mountains. We saw lots of wildlife – hawks, coyotes and even a big horn sheep! Surprisingly, we saw only about a dozen or so other bike riders, and no other recumbent riders.

We stopped at a grocery store in Henderson before we started and purchased sandwiches to bring along with us. We had a lovely lunch overlooking Lake Mead just before the big climb up into Boulder City. The trail runs close to the main street in Boulder City – so if you wanted, it would be easy to stop there and have lunch or coffee.

All in all – I recommend this trail to anybody who can get to it – it’s an amazing resource for the residents in the area.  You can get more information about the trail, along with trail maps, trail head locations and parking information from the official trail website.

Historic Railroad Tunnel Trail

While riding the River Mountains Loop Trail on our first trip to Henderson, we passed the trail head for the Historic Railroad Tunnel Trail.   We did not have time on that first day to ride this trail, but it looked really interesting, so we went back the next day to ride it.

This is a very cool trail. It is unpaved, but is hard packed crushed gravel, and has no significant hills. The trikes had no trouble with it, although travel was pretty slow. It runs along the abandoned bed of the railroad built in 1939 to haul concrete and supplies for  construction of Hoover Dam.   The railroad abandoned the route in 1962.  It runs about 7.5 miles, from the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the parking structure at Hoover Dam.   Along the way, it passes through a series of 5 tunnels. Each tunnel is relativity short – maybe 200-300 feet. They were built extra large to accommodate the huge loads of concrete that were hauled.   We rode it out and back, for a total of 15 miles.

It was another picture perfect day. Clear, cool and cloudless. This is a very popular trail. There we many folks out hiking, walking their dogs and riding bikes. We even saw one couple riding a recumbent tandem! Lots of beautiful views of Lake Mead and the surrounding mountains! Another great ride in the Vegas area.

On a longer day, you could ride the River Mountains Loop, and add this out and back, and still have time for lunch. On these short winter days, and at our dawdling pace, we decided to do them separately. But they are immediately next to each other, so doing them at the same time on a long day would be fine.

The second half – from the end of the last tunnel to Hoover Dam, is not nearly as scenic as the first half – it’s kind of ugly and passes through a bunch of power lines and generators and relays stations and other industrial stuff – so if you want a shorter ride, I’d suggest just going to the end of the tunnels and returning. Also, you never really get to see Hoover Dam. The trail gets you close, but if you really want to see the Dam you need to ride on a pretty busy highway for another mile or so after you get to the end of the trail.

More info about this trail is available from The National Park Service