Well gobot5, why are you so interested in the vegas canyon hike? The reason I ask, is I bet you saw something out in the desert you can not explain. Right?
Well Mrs.Phlosphr and I lived in Arizona for 5 years whilst in Graduate school. We still own a home in Phoenix. We did some serious hiking all over the desert south west, including, outside vegas. We have some stories what would make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end… One particular story that comes to mind is when we were way out on the Joshua Tree Parkway Route 93 I think, halfway between vegas and phoenix. Were were set to camp, up in the Bradshaw mountains near Crown King and it was getting dark outside.
There were steep cliffs all around us, we were situated on a small butt about 60-70 feet above the bottom of the canyon, with large 4 to 500 foot walls all around us. There was a heck of an echo. But what we saw around 2:30 that evening was enough to keep us up for the rest of the night.
Now I carry a 9mm with me whenever I hike because you never know when you’ll run into a mountain lion, or some crazy thinking your the devil…But that night in early september 95’ the wife and I heard something that sounded like 40 or 50 men tromping through the canyon right below us. When my wife woke me up, I immediately signaled for her to be quiet, because of the echo whoever it was would immediately be alerted to where we were. I inched over to the edge of the Butt we were an and looked over the edge. Something, in a large group was walking or tromping along the canyon floor. In formation I might add. There was a quarter moon that night and I could see what looked like a group of people, not speaking, but looking all over the place. There was no leader but when they came to the box canyon right next to us about 500 yards away, they broke out on a full climb up. NO lights no nothing. All of them. And they climbed with such speed that is was quite frightening.
Don’t get me wrong they were finding hand holds, and actually climing, but they were acting like they all knew where thehand holds were. In total I’d say there were maybe 30 of them. All dressed in a grey camo type suit, with winter type hats on.
Mrs.Phlosphr was so scared she was trembling. I on the other hand was concentrating on staying quiet and making sure if they looked back - as we were now in clear sight of them - we were ready to jump down and beat feet…
Well to make a long story short, they didn’t see us, and when they crested the top of the ravine they just kept on walking north. It may have been some type of special ops group, or something like it, but if you saw them move up this 400 foot canyon wall like it was nothing, you’d be quite alarmed as well, no less that is was 2:30 in the morning.
So call it what you will, there are a lot of freaky things in the desert that can not be explained, I will say this, Mrs.Phlosphr and I never went ‘bushwacking’ again where we didn’t know the territory.
.(Please?)