Kyle Canyon Slots Trail
Lee Canyon, The Coolest Place In Las Vegas. Parking Reservations. SEASON PASS & RIDE LOCAL CARD HOLDER RESERVATIONS AVAILABLE DEC. The slot canyon is only about 1/8th mile long, but very distinct with high walls on either side towering 150-200 feet and a narrow band of sky above. It’s entrance is only about 1/4th mile from the parking area at the Harris Springs Rd / Kyle Canyon Rd intersection, so it’s easy to walk the rough 4WD road to the canyon entrance.
The Hike
- At nearly 5,600 feet in elevation, Kyle Canyon will be at least ten degrees cooler than Vegas. The narrows of Kyle Canyon will be encountered at the beginning of your hike. Many, with time to burn, hike the full trail 2.5 miles up the canyon and back, enjoying the Joshua trees and conifers found at these higher elevations.
- One of the more unusual paths leads up Fletcher Canyon, a north side tributary of Kyle Canyon, which starts off wide, overgrown and rather uninteresting but eventually narrows, beyond a spring and seasonal stream, and for several hundred feet forms a deep, enclosed, slot-like section framed by smooth, grey brown walls of water-polished limestone.
From the edge of Harris Springs Road or from Kyle Canyon Slots Trailhead, the route follows the wash upstream through the first slot. This slot is narrow, but short, and opens into a spot long used for primitive camping.
Kyle Canyon Slots Trailer
Following the wash upstream, the route winds between high walls formed from sand, gravel, and rocks washed down from the Spring Mountains during previous ice ages. When the climate warmed, the wash dried, and the alluvial particles stopped moving. Eventually the alluvial particles became cemented to form a type of conglomerate rock called fanglomerate (solidified alluvial fan materials). After the fanglomerate formed, occasional flash floods in the wash cut down through the fanglomerate, leaving sculpted walls and hoodoos here and lower in Kyle Canyon Wash.
Kyle Canyon Slots Trail Map
Kyle Canyon Slots Trails
Continuing upstream, the narrow canyon walls narrow again at the second slot. This slot is a bit deeper, narrower, and longer than the first, but it is short. Emerging into the sunlight on the far site, a use-trail continues upstream angling along the left wall of the canyon, and shortly it arrives at a T-intersection (Wpt. 02) with an old road.