Lee Canyon offers respite from heat with summer options

Just about 50 miles from the hustle and bustle of the Strip, the temperature drops dramatically and the landscape turns from brown to green.

Lee Canyon, in the Spring Mountains, does most of its business in the winter, offering, among other things, a place for locals to ski.

But it’s open for visitors in the summer, too, giving people a respite from the heat with hiking, biking, disc golf, tetherball, horseshoe pits and other activities.

“(Visitors) have this perception that, yeah, it’s the Strip and it’s all this big crazy city and don’t realize you’ve got areas like Lee Canyon here,” Lee Canyon general manager Dan Hooper said. “You have this really great access to the outdoors really, really close to a major city.”

The area has changed drastically since Jim Seely, Lee Canyon’s marketing chief, arrived and helped expand its offerings for customers.

“If you first came up here again 12 years ago, it had the basic amenities, and that was about it, but we’re really starting to get a little more robust with our customer service and everything that we have to offer,” Seely said.

Lee Canyon is in the middle of even more expansion plans with the hopes that it can add more summer activities such as downhill mountain biking, more hiking trails, a mountain coaster and possibly zip lines.

Currently, it’s in the environmental impact phase.

“At the moment, we’re just really happy with what we currently have to offer,” Hooper said.

That includes a disc golf course, which has 16 holes and starts at 9,300 feet. Players work their way down as they go.

On July 23, Lee Canyon will have its annual Birdies and Beer event, open to beginning disc golf players, in which competitors can stop along the course to sample craft beers.

Las Vegas named fifth best city for recreation

WalletHub, a personal finance website, recently named Las Vegas the fifth-best city for recreation in a study of the 100 largest cities in the United States.

Using 35 metrics, WalletHub examined “basic living costs, the quality of parks, the accessibility of entertainment and recreational facilities as well as the climate.”

Orlando, Florida, was first and Chula Vista, California, last.

Las Vegas ranked at the top in number of music venues per capita, number of hiking trails per 100,000 residents and number of ice cream and frozen yogurt shops per 100,000 residents.

A full breakdown of the results can be found on WalletHub’s website.

Betsy Helfand can be reached at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @BetsyHelfand