Spring Mountains Visitor Gateway — Attraction in Summerlin South

My wife and I are new to living in Vegas by way of Colorado. We drove to Mt Charleston to check the landscape and do a hike. We stopped along the side of the road and saw some people hiking, so we followed suit. There was a clear defined walk path, a large metal gate leading the way, & several people hiking a well designated, yet unnamed trail. The trail was decent, not much of a view at the top. At least it was a solid 2 hour workout.

On the way home we stopped at a brand new visitor center for a snack and water. I wanted to inquire about the trail we hiked.

I asked the lady sitting down about the trail. She was seemingly bothered as she was in deep browsing of photos on Facebook. She said “Wait a minute”. Then she pawned me off onto one of her workers. I asked her about the trail and she said none exists... to which I replied, Ma’am, we just hiked a trail with numerous other people. She denied it existed yet again. So I asked if she’d like to see the photos we took to help us get an understanding of the trail. She became agitated and asked the lady sitting down who was still browsing her Facebook photos, who angrily said “No such trail exists”. Very rudely to my wife. I was appalled. I was inquiring about a trail, to which I felt the best knowledge would come from the visitor center.

The manager on Facebook decided to look up and argue with me that there was no trail. So I pulled out my phone and showed her that infact there was a trail.

Then she stated that she cannot authorize that trail, and that people have made their own trail.

So I asked who put the large gate up on the path, and who carried all the rocks along the way to form the most obvious trail I’ve ever seen. At this time I began to make it a comical conversation because the manager was bothered by me interrupting her Facebook photo memory time.

I showed her the gate. The path. Etc. after 20 minutes she finally revealed that it was an Old morning trail. Fair enough. That’s all we wanted to know. I’ve researched the trail, it’s all over online. It’s called the Springs trail. There are two-three small creeks at the top, trickles of water more less.

The lady asked us to leave, to which I replied it was public land and she had no right. My wife and I gathered our things and left.

I would recommend avoiding this visitation center. The staff was not very knowledgeable and extremely rude. Had it been a man speaking to my wife as such we’d have much larger problems. If you’re looking to wasting a half hour of your day getting scolded for asking questions, feel free to...

The staff member I spoke to was rude, unhelpful, and left me with the distinct impression that she was either new or genuinely did not enjoy her job. Even the two other parks employees behind her looked shocked at the way that she was handling the situation. I was there long enough to ask two questions before I realized she was going to be unhelpful and combative and I was not going to get any information that I needed. I came in to ask about trails in the area and conditions, only to get the same sentence repeated to my face rudely over and over again.... Apparently they are not allowed to even discuss trails that are not on their map or recommended by them. So rather than have a decent conversation with me the lady just kept repeating, "I can't recommend those trails. I'm only able to discuss trails on this map." I've been to many national and state parks across this country, And that lack of engagement only serves to remove liability in the event of a problem. It does absolutely nothing to help people avoid problems in the first place.... Being open and honest about trail conditions and trails signage, sponsored by the state park service or not, is important to avoid problems and accidents. And for the record, I went to the trail, I hiked the trail, it was very well marked which was my question, And there were hundreds of other people there. But the refusal of this staff member to even answer the most basic questions left me with a very negative impression of your state park service. Don't waste your time going to the visitor gateway and dealing with rude people. Just download all trails like I did. You'll even get friendlier answers to...

This is a National Forest Service run facility and The Visitor Center appears to be fairly new. It is very clean and has modern restroom facilities. Lots of informative displays inside to educate you about the surrounding plants and animals.

It is not as dramatic as Red Rock Canyon but it is nearby and can be done before or after Red Rock. We did not hike but you can see that there are paved trails to get you started. This is already at an elevation of about 6,000 ft so be prepared if you're going to hike for any extended amount of time.

We were there about 1:00 in the afternoon on a weekday and there was a small tour group and a few other individuals there, not crowded at all. There are water fountains but no other places places to get food or other drinks. The gift shop is closed and doesn't look like it's going to be open. I removed one star in my review for that.

It is about a 45-minute drive from Red Rock and was worth the trip for me. There is no...