This picturesque city has been named America’s new outdoor sports capital after nature-loving Californians moved there in droves
The city widely seen as an oasis of man-made entertainment, over-the-top culinary and entertainment experiences, has become a haven for nature explorers.
Known for its abundance of vices, the unassuming desert town has become a place where many discover proximity to the beautiful outdoors.
Las Vegas, Nevada has in recent years become home to an elite class of climbers who find the city more affordable, enjoyable, and generally more compatible with their particular way of life than other “nature-oriented” cities.
“People go to Denver because they say they want to be close to nature. But it’s at least an hour’s drive from the real mountains,” Alex Honnold said Los Angeles Times.
Honnold, 38, the world’s best-known mountain climber thanks in large part to the success of the award-winning documentary “Free Solo,” said he thinks Vegas is “better than any other city in the country that has a reputation for being outdoors.”
The desert city generally seen as an oasis of man-made entertainment has become a haven for naturalists who have discovered the proximity to the outdoors
“In Vegas you can live in the middle of a suburb and be 15 minutes from the trailheads where you can be all alone and feel like you’re dying,” he noted.
Other avid climbers agree with Honnold and have been drawn to Vegas for its under-the-radar geographic diversity, as well as its affordability and solid infrastructure it offers for settling down and raising a family.
Just beyond the suburbs outside the famous and infamous Las Vegas strip lie an incredible number of hiking and climbing trails through Red Rock Canyon, which begins at approximately 3,000 feet.
Even Yosemite in Northern California can no longer compete with what Vegas has to offer in the minds of this community of world-class climbers.
‘Yosemite is a world destination in spring and autumn. But in the summer it’s way too hot and way too crowded,” Honnold said, adding that it gets “too wintery” in the colder months.
Others in the Honnold community, like five-time U.S. National Sport Climbing Champion Emily Harrington, 37, agree that Vegas offers something that other climbing destinations in the country cannot.
“Yosemite is just a tough place to exist,” she said, noting that pushing yourself mentally and physically all day to get back to a van can become exhausting and is hardly conducive to the time of life she is in landed.
Harrington and her climber husband, Adrian Ballinger, recently welcomed a son, adding urgency to their desire to live somewhere decidedly livable.
They recently bought a house not far from where Honnold, his wife and their two young children live.
The El Dorado Gorge near Vegas is another spot that nature and history buffs might note as a place to visit
Climbers take stock of the incredible view atop a mountaintop in Vegas
Climber Alex Honnold looks over his shoulder as he approaches the Rainbow Wall at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area Monday, May 13, 2024 in Las Vegas
Nevada has long been an under-the-radar place for nature lovers to visit
“I can go out, drive five minutes to the trailhead, climb big routes all day, and then come back to my house and my kid and put him to bed, and I don’t have to live in a van!” Harrington told the Times.
“It’s just so much fun,” she added, naming some of her favorite restaurants in the area.
Jonathan Siegrist, another millennial climber, is also a big believer in the Vegas lifestyle, but says it’s been an uphill battle — so to speak — convincing his peers of the area’s assets.
“This city still has a very bad reputation in the outdoor community,” he said — unlike, say, his hometown of Boulder, Colorado, where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years.
“Many outdoorsmen would never stoop so low to walk into a casino and enjoy themselves, or shop at a strip mall.” That’s a big contributing factor to why Vegas has flown under the radar.”
Right now, that’s something Vegas Siegrist is enjoying.
The more mainstream mountain towns, he says, are full of people who conform to a single aesthetic and ideological way of life.
But in Vegas, on days when he’s not climbing, he has the chance to be “a completely different version of myself.”