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Jessica
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Never been there to ride but there a lot on business. There are places to rent bikes and Bootleg Canyon is the popular place, when InterBike was hosted in Vegas that is where all of the companies did demos. I am sure there are other people with better info. I was never able to ride out there.

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I have a guaranteed way to come home from Vegas with $2,000; leave home with $4,000. Works every time for me. 

Las Vegas has lots of good riding. You can rent a bike at Las Vegas Cyclery in the west part of town and ride to a good area.  That makes it easy to figure out the logistics of renting a bike and not having to transport it to a ride area.

I wish I had a guide the time I rode there. I bet there is a local scene that would ride with you just like there is here if someone came on here to ask for some guidance.

https://www.strava.com/heatmap#13.00/-115.34997/36.07772/gray/ride

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So yeah, @Jessica and I are booked for Vegas for bike (and other non-gambling) fun from Jan 24 to 28. We should get 4 good days of riding, and maybe even a 5th Monday AM ride out of the deal. Certainly we're going to depend heavily on Trail Forks and Project MTB, but if anyone else has some knowledge out there (trails or food), then it woudl be greatly appreciated. 

 

So how about it, @Hakalugi, any pointers here? I'm going to dig through your Strava for some ideas. Is there anything else withing about 1.5 to 2 hours drive that are must-hits while in the area, or are there plenty of trails in town? And what isn't worthwhile and we should just skip?

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20 hours ago, Barry said:

So yeah, @Jessica and I are booked for Vegas for bike (and other non-gambling) fun from Jan 24 to 28. We should get 4 good days of riding, and maybe even a 5th Monday AM ride out of the deal. Certainly we're going to depend heavily on Trail Forks and Project MTB, but if anyone else has some knowledge out there (trails or food), then it woudl be greatly appreciated. 

 

So how about it, @Hakalugi, any pointers here? I'm going to dig through your Strava for some ideas. Is there anything else withing about 1.5 to 2 hours drive that are must-hits while in the area, or are there plenty of trails in town? And what isn't worthwhile and we should just skip?

Heck yeah, lots of good stuff out there! Here's a quick snap shot of my favorite places to ride and I'd recommend all four of them: Bear's Best, Cotton Wood starting from Blue Diamond, Cowboy Trails, & Bootleg Canyon.

As John mentioned above, Las Vegas Cyclery can dial you in on the latest trail insight (my friend Jared owns it & he has good peeps that are in the know) as well as Mike from Eye Gear Sports Optics (same shopping center), who's one of the best riders I know & a good friend. 

Here's a few links you've probably scene.

Bear's Best has some of the best views of Vegas and awesome trails!

https://www.strava.com/activities/1456649408

https://www.strava.com/activities/1448739502

Cotton Wood from Blue Diamond, NV is vast and one of the original places mtb playgrounds... nothing but smile miles out there below the Red Rock Bluffs.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1451876398

https://www.strava.com/activities/102349495

Cowboy Trails - More technical orientated trail system but it's one of my favorites. 

https://www.strava.com/activities/102117670

Bootleg Canyon is fantastic and covers everything from cliff hucking to smooth and flowy... a must do!

https://www.mtbproject.com/directory/8011519/bootleg-canyon

I'll send ya some more links once my bandwidth opens up.

 

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Some REALLY nice maps can be found here: http://mountainbikemaps.com/

I really like having a paper map, even if I have a GPS map. Using them together is ideal in many cases I think.

I haven't lived out there since I was a kid but have visited several times with my MTB, but I will defer to locals whether it is worth it to leave the area, but it may be worth heading up to the St George area for at least a day. The scenery is definitely at the next level although food and other amenities (like beer) are much more limited (it is Utah after all). I thought the JEM trail system near Hurricane was my favorite. I would skip Gooseberry Mesa as I think there are better options. The Bearclaw Poppy trailhead area is fun if you want some burms and jumps and connects to a bunch of other stuff.

Bootleg is definitely bad ass and will provide as much exposure and chunk as you can handle, although much it is totally doable on an XC rig.

Have fun!

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23 hours ago, Barry said:

Is there anything else withing about 1.5 to 2 hours drive that are must-hits while in the area, or are there plenty of trails in town? And what isn't worthwhile and we should just skip?

Forgot to answer this... St George UT area has some of the best trails I've ridden. It's 2-2.5 hrs away pending where you decide to ride as there's over 2 weeks worth of riding up there... but think that should be it's own trip as you won't be disappointed w/ Vegas area trails. My Strava links will hope connect the flow together vs randomly syncing up loops.

If you decide to hit St George let me know as I'll dial you in for some awesome loops.

http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/trails/idx-st-g.htm

http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/trails/idx-gooseberry.htm

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On 1/9/2019 at 1:26 PM, Barry said:

So yeah, @Jessica and I are booked for Vegas for bike (and other non-gambling) fun from Jan 24 to 28. We should get 4 good days of riding, and maybe even a 5th Monday AM ride out of the deal.

Did you get an air/car/hotel package deal or are you driving?  Direct flights from Austin?  I have zip interest in casinos, but there does look to be a lot of fun riding in the area. 

On 1/10/2019 at 12:20 PM, GFisher said:

Some REALLY nice maps can be found here: http://mountainbikemaps.com/

Amazing web site with great resources.   Their twitter feed is uniquely Nevada/Vegas. 

ETA: KAYAK web site says that January is low season in Vegas.  There are Austin-Vegas-Austin round-trip tickets on Allegiant as low as $156.  I think Frontier flies as well.  Anybody know how much it costs to bring a bike along these days? 

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54 minutes ago, June Bug said:

Did you get an air/car/hotel package deal or are you driving?  Direct flights from Austin?  I have zip interest in casinos, but there does look to be a lot of fun riding in the area. 

We also have no interest in gambling. We may spend $10 as a novelty one night. 

 

I drive a lot for biking. A lot. But I think I have a 13 hour hard limit. I plan to drive to Chattanooga next month, for example, but LV was out of the question too far. 

 

No package deals, but yes, we got direct flights through Frontier. I used Google flights to select the airline, but then actually got them on the Frontier site. If you plan far enough out, and are flexible, you could likely get tickets with Frontier for under $100 each way. Our flights to LV were only about $55 each. But our return flights were in the $170 range. One thing about Frontier is that the bike travel fee is $75 per bike per flight. And you can pack up to 99 pounds in the bike box for that price. Frontier is one of the better airlines in this regard, and priced the same as Southwest. At $50 per way, JetBlue is still the best for bikes, while Delta, United and American all have the GFYS pricing of $150 per bike per way. 

 

We got a minivan through Priceline, and a decent casino hotel right downtown through Groupon. One thing to be careful about with hotel pricing though...we kept finding decent deals, only to have an extra $50-100 placed on the daily rate at checkout--this happened over and over with Priceline. "Resort fees" or some such, it was calling it. Finally Groupon didn't seem to have those fees, at least for the hotel we found. And at $10/day, I don't see a reason to buy bike boxes with BSS renting them out so cheap. 

 

I think if you plan far enough out (which we didn't do), use Airbnb for a room (which we didn't do), pack your clothes in the bike box (we'll do some of that), and get a minivan, an individual could do a 4-5 night Vegas Vacation with rental boxes for about $650, and 2 folks could do it for about $900. 

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@Hakalugi Thanks again for your help so far. We fly out Wednesday night, so I looking for some last minute advice. 

 

Tires: What's the sand trap situation? @Jessica has her 2.2" 29er tires and her 2.8" 27.5 Rekons as options. If there are lots of sandtraps, may be that the 2.8s are the way to go. Surely you just ran skinny 29ers as usual though.

 

Chain Lube. I have used ProLink for 13 years, and it has served me well all but one situation. I've used it all over the country and all over Texas to good success, including Big Bend and El Paso. Only that red dirt in Palo Duro caused me problems. I only get about 5 miles in, and the grinding starts once the chain picks up the red dust. Next time I visit PD, I'm going to try a dry, waxy lube. I have some FinishLine Dry that may work out better. So for LV, should I expect Big Bend type of sand/dirt, or Palo Duro type of sand/dirt? Stick with my trusty wet lube, or go with a dry lube?

 

On 1/10/2019 at 1:28 PM, Hakalugi said:

If you decide to hit St George let me know as I'll dial you in for some awesome loops.

It's hard to not consider world-class trails when you're so close. So indeed I think we're looking to spend one afternoon in the St. George area. Perhaps Goosberry. But it's all weather dependent. We don't want to go out there for a freezing cold ride, or find snow when we're planning on highs in the low 60s. The weather looks to be slightly colder than LV, but not terribly so. Are any of these trails high country/seasonal? 

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@Barry you're going to have a good time out there!!

Definitely swing into https://www.lasvegascyclery.com/ and get the latest on the Bear's Best trails, they're always expanding that playground.

I used T9 chainlube while living out there, dry gets the nod. There's not a lot of sand to content with where you'll be riding, good to go w/ 2.2 29ers. 

If you decide to ride trails in Utah, I'd recommend these:

https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/4091943/hurricane-rim-loop-imba-epic This is a classic w/ great views.

https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/3999652/jem-trail You can connect this with the above loop.

This is one of my favorite trail systems I've played on, https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/4183760/gooseberry-mesa-the-big-loop. It's like RPR 's open rock sections but 80% of the time... it's not for everyone & lacks flow compared to Hurricane Rim Loop & Jem but amazing nonetheless. 

If you have time, we can chat tonight or any time while you're out there.

Have a good one!

J

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Thanks for all the feedback. We are super excited about the trip! Dry lube and skinny tires it is. 

 

2 minutes ago, Hakalugi said:

Definitely swing into https://www.lasvegascyclery.com/ and get the latest on the Bear's Best trails, they're always expanding that playground.

 

I may indeed need to check with those guys about Bear's Best. Trail Forks shows some trails as being closed. And the maps website that @GFisher posted, shows all of Bear's Best as being closed.  It says:

 

Quote

Sadly (if you can't afford to live there) a Multi Million dollar neighborhood is being built right up in the foothills of the amazing Blue Diamond Mesa, which is also the home to this fun trail network. These trails have been roped off for construction of the new neighborhood. 

We suggest trying Southwest Ridge instead. 

 

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56 minutes ago, Barry said:

I may indeed need to check with those guys about Bear's Best. Trail Forks shows some trails as being closed. And the maps website that @GFisher posted, shows all of Bear's Best as being closed.  It says:

 

 

That map website was last updated in 2015 when there was talk of shutting down access through a neighborhood, etc... which is why I didn't list that site as a resource, it's outdated for Bear's Best but not the other trail systems. BB is open and waiting for you to ride. My friends rode them Sat & Sun and said it was shreddy AF... then sent pics to brag about it :classic_laugh:.

 

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