What do you do when it’s 115° (in the shade)?

Escape from the heat on Mt Charleston

In many areas of the world, daily temperatures of 115° or higher with an ultra-dry 5% humidity might cause widespread panic, but here in the Mojave Desert it’s business as usual.

So on Saturday morning, we grab our bookbags and head out for the meeting for field service. It’s at 9:30 am so we can get out to the field by 10 and hopefully not wake too many people up.

At that time of day, it’s barely even a hundred, and if you find any shade (always a dicey proposition) you quickly come to appreciate the Bible’s expression of finding comfort in the shadow of a rocky crag.

So generally we spend a couple of hours in the ministry and then search for ways to cool off. Some have pools or just stay inside with the air conditioning. But what many people don’t realize about the geography of Las Vegas is that less than 1 hour away lies a wooded, cool paradise.

Yes, 12,000 foot Mt Charleston and the Spring Mountain range lie just to the west. You can drive up to about the 8,000 foot level, where there is a pleasant lodge, and in the wintertime, an active snowboard and ski resort.

So Shirley and I just took our chocolate lab Phoebe and cruised up there Saturday, where the temperature was about 20 degrees cooler. We grabbed our packs and hiked up the Trail Canyon path for a few miles, enjoying the pleasant rustling of the Aspen, and feeling the air get steadily cooler the higher we went.

This time of year, the snow melt is over, so there’s not much for water, but as you can see from the photos, there’s plenty of greenery. In fact, one reason Vegas is so dry (and we haven’t seen rain for months) is that the Spring Mountains capture all the moisture that tries to come from California before it can get to our desert valley.

Aspen, Fir and cool air just an hour from Las Vegas

All we have to do is tough it out until the middle of September, then we have about nine months of cloudless, deep blue skies and pleasant temperatures. And we’ll enjoy those rare rainy days that give us our average of 3 inches a year- whether we need it or not.

We also give thanks that we don’t live in the nearby Death Valley National Park, where temperatures will hit around 130 in summer.

But it’s great to visit in the fall, as a future post will describe.