Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is a barren, craggy park 17 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip. Since the 1970s, when climbers first came to the area, more than 2,000 rock climbing routes have been pioneered on the area's tall cliffs and sandstone domes, around which "mountain peaks rise thousands of feet off the desert floor, petroglyphs bake in the sun, and wild burros and desert tortoises track the park's coarse sand."

The quote marks denote words taken from an article I wrote on Red Rock Canyon for the New York Times -- "Outside Las Vegas, a Game of Skill" -- in March of 2006. For years, on assignments as well as for the pure fun of it, I have visited Red Rock to pull on its near-perfect stone and bake in the sun in a strange, red environment that can only be described as Martian. ... Click to read full adventure

The SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger is a handheld, one-way GPS messaging device that offers a vital link of satellite communication — independent of cellular-phone coverage — with emergency services, friends and family. It also lets adventurers track and map their routes on excursions in the mountains, desert, ocean, and to literal ends of the Earth!

www.findmespot.com