With luck, the next few weeks will give us some prime get-out-of-the-house weather. There’s no better time to go hiking or biking on one of the Valley’s many paved or unpaved trails, which you can find using the Neon to Nature mobile app (available for both Android and iPhone.) Perhaps you could even explore the urban trails—the 7-plus-mile I-215 West Beltway Trail, the 9-mile Flamingo Arroyo Trail, the 14-mile Las Vegas Wash Trail and others—that will someday form the Vegas Valley Rim Trail, a giant loop that will circle almost the entire metropolitan area.
The Rim Trail is about 50 percent complete, according to Get Outdoors Nevada executive director Mauricia Baca. The coming year will see the local nonprofit—dedicated to helping residents to connect to natural Nevada—actively studying how to complete the loop. (Right now, the north and southwest are the largest gaps.) GON already has a full plate—they’re working with the Friends of Red Rock Canyon group on a possible Red Rock Loop hiking trail, and maintaining the Las Vegas Healing Garden for victims of the October 1 shootings—but they continue to work to city and county officials on closing the circle. “The jurisdictions continue to really work well together on this,” Baca says. “It’s a trail project that they all very much want to see happen."