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Men’s Journal
March 2004
BOOTLEG CANYON
High Rolling in the Vegas Desert
By Andrew Vontz
It’s 6 a.m. when I wheel my Giant VT1 freeride mountain bike through the Paris Las Vegas Casino. Disheveled drunks stumble past me, and slot zombies yank away in search of a payday. I’m hoping for a different jackpot today: I’m heading to Bootleg Canyon, 25 miles southwest of the Strip, to hit what I’ve heard are some of North America’s best mountain-biking trails.
After a twenty-minute drive I arrive in Boulder City — a town with 15,000 inhabitants that’s the gateway both to the Hoover Dam and to Bootleg Canyon — to hook up with Dan and Jeff Haskin and Brent Thomson. Ten years ago Thomson, a 51-year-old professional artist, had quadruple bypass surgery and started mountain biking to stay in shape. For the sake of convenience, he built some trails on city land near his home in the canyon. They weren’t typical trails: He crafted mountain-bike specific, flow-oriented routes that take advantage of the quantum leaps made in the designs of mountain bike suspension, tires, and frames during the past decade. It’s a revolutionary approach even now.
In 2001 Boulder City hired Thomson to expand the trail network, and with the help of the Haskins he built 35-plus miles of singletrack (including interconnected cross-country loops and mountaincross and dual slalom courses, and five downhill routes) on 4,000 acres. Thomson and the locals are new school, BMX-inflected freeriders, but Bootleg’s cross-country trails are world class, too: Last year the International Mountain Bicycling Association bestowed its coveted Epic status on the Mother Trail.
The temperature is already 100 when we drive the ten minutes to the top of Radar Mountain, where we drop onto the one mile-long Boy Scout Trail. For 30 minutes we follow the exposed dirt route, twisting and dipping through mini rock gardens and over dropoffs, whoops, and jumps. My heart is pegged at its anaerobic threshold for much of the ride — even though we’re only dropping 1,200 feet from peak to base. As we near the trailhead, the singletrack gives way to fire road. Ten feet below there’s a steep slope. “Should I jump it?” Jeff asks. His gear — T-shirt, baggy shorts, and cross-country helmet — gives me pause. But moments later he launches off the cliff to a flawless landing. Then he goes back and does it three more times. We’re surrounded by opportunities for aerial madness, but seeing as I didn’t personally build this trail, I opt out, and we roll on.
We do three more shuttle runs to the top and bomb back down, with gusts of 115-degree August air blowing in off the black rocks surrounding Lake Mead. (From September to April the temperature averages a milder 75.) It’s not even noon, and I’ve done five solid hours of the best riding in recent memory.
The following afternoon we take a dip in Lake Mead to cool down, then we head up the canyon for a ride before sunset. As we swoop from the 1.75-mile Girl Scout Trail onto the BMX-inspired double jumps and drops of the East Lake Loop, Thomson pulls out ahead of me and disappears into the darkness. The full moon starts rising over Fortification mountain and I feel like I’m worlds away from the neon of Vegas, where I’ll rest my head tonight, before getting up tomorrow for another winner of a ride.
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