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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JERRY HENKEL
Bitter Springs Trail: Sweet medicine
STORY BY A.D. HOPKINS
If your personal sanity requires a frequent dose of desert backcountry, you could hardly ask for a quicker remedy than the Bitter Springs Trail.
This 28-mile dirt road takes less than four hours, pavement to pavement, and the trailhead and trail end are each only about an hour from Las Vegas. It's possible to do the entire trip in six hours, yet there's enough interesting country to stretch the same excursion into an overnight or three-day trip.
Winding southwest from the Valley of Fire region to Echo Wash on North Shore Road in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, it passes through the foothills of the Muddy Mountains and a big slice of scenic country, which, with any luck, you'll have almost to yourself. It's such a gem, in fact, that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has named it a National Back Country Byway, a designation applied to fewer than 100 back roads on public lands.
The trail is easier to find from the northwest end, reason enough for those of us with limited navigational skills to start there. But it's also easier to photograph traveling in that direction. Because the best photo opportunities are concentrated on that end of the trail, that's where you want to be when the available light is at its best.
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The March/April 2003 Issue is out. Find it at Las Vegas bookstores today.
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