Three Trails, One Gate: What's Actually Open Behind Ascaya

If you live in Ascaya and you've heard something about Sloan Canyon being closed, you're not wrong. But you're probably picturing the wrong trail.

That confusion is understandable. Ascaya sits against three different trail systems stacked almost on top of each other: the private loop inside the gates, the public McCullough Hills Trail that starts a few minutes from your driveway, and the federal wilderness beyond both of those. Each one has its own owner, its own hours, and right now, its own set of rules about what's actually open. Conflate them and you either miss a hike you could easily take this week, or show up somewhere with your dog and get turned around at a trailhead.

The gate is not where the trail system ends

Ascaya's own grounds include more than two miles of private trail winding through the community, connecting homesites to the Family Park and the overlooks near the Clubhouse. That loop is exactly what it sounds like: maintained by Ascaya, open to residents whenever they want it, no hours posted because there's no one to post them for.

Step past the guard gate, though, and the ownership changes. The McCullough Hills Trail begins at the City of Henderson's trailhead at 295 Mission Drive, a few minutes from the community entrance. This one belongs to the city, not to Ascaya, and it comes with a real set of posted rules: lighted sections open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., with unlit trail open dawn to dusk. The trailhead itself has parking, restrooms, picnic tables, and horse tie-ups, because the trail is shared with equestrians as much as hikers and mountain bikers.

From that same trailhead, the McCullough Hills Trail runs roughly 8 miles one-way across the foothills to Anthem Hills Park, which makes for a 16-mile round trip with about 1,800 feet of elevation gain if you walk the whole thing. Almost nobody does. Most residents treat it the way you'd treat a gym with no membership fee: a short out-and-back before work, a longer loop on a weekend morning, the full crossing to Anthem maybe once a year if at all. Gila monster signs mark every mile, so you always know exactly how far you've gone and how far back it is.

Keep walking past the McCullough Hills Trail and you cross into land the city doesn't manage at all. That's Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, nearly 48,500 acres of Mojave Desert that Congress set aside in 2002. The Bureau of Land Management describes it plainly: Congress designated the area "to preserve and protect a portion of southern Nevada's Mojave Desert for future generations." That third layer is where the actual news is right now, and it's not the layer most Ascaya residents hike on a Tuesday.

What's actually closed, and what isn't

The closure making the rounds is real. Nawghaw Poa Road and its parking area, deep inside Sloan Canyon NCA, have been shut down since November 2024 and will stay that way until November 11, 2026, while the BLM builds a new visitor contact station. That closure specifically affects the Petroglyph Canyon Trail and the connecting 101 Trail, which have been rerouted with parking moved to Democracy Drive instead.

Here's the part that matters if you live behind the Ascaya gate: none of that touches the McCullough Hills Trail. The trailhead at 295 Mission Drive is open, the trail to Anthem Hills Park is open, and the city's own facility listing shows no interruption to hours or access. The confusion happens because both trail systems sit inside the same conservation area boundary, and a headline about "Sloan Canyon closures" doesn't distinguish between the two. If your Saturday morning routine is the loop from Mission Drive, you're unaffected. If you were planning a trip specifically to see the petroglyphs, you now park at Democracy Drive instead of Nawghaw Poa Road, and you should build in the extra distance.

The rules change depending on which patch of dirt you're standing on

This is the detail that trips people up more than the closure itself. Each of the three trail layers around Ascaya runs on a different rulebook, and the differences aren't cosmetic.

On the McCullough Hills Trail, dogs are welcome on leash, alongside hikers, mountain bikers, and horses sharing the same graded gravel surface. Cross into the Petroglyph Canyon area of Sloan Canyon NCA and that changes entirely: dogs are prohibited there, with service animals as the only exception, because the canyon protects both rock art and a fragile desert ecosystem. Petroglyph Canyon also caps visitation at 20 people at a time and runs strict day-use hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., while the McCullough Hills Trail has no such cap and no posted fee at all.

Here's how the three systems actually compare, as of this September:

When to actually go

Henderson's own guidance on the McCullough Hills Trail points to October through May as the window worth using, and anyone who's tried it in July already knows why. The desert doesn't offer much shade along the route, and the exposed gravel surface holds heat well into the evening during summer. Late fall brings the clearest air of the year, when the Strip views from the first mile of trail are sharpest. Come March and April, the creosote and white bursage along the route green up after winter rain, which is as close as this stretch of desert gets to a bloom season.

Wildlife sightings are a matter of patience more than luck. Desert bighorn sheep move through the McCullough Range and Sloan Canyon NCA, along with desert tortoise, roadrunner, and chuckwalla. The desert tortoise in particular is worth knowing before you encounter one: it's a protected species, and if you see one crossing the trail, the right move is to stop, let it pass, and leave it alone. Handling one can cause it to lose water it needs to survive the season.

Back through the gate

The natural endpoint of any hike from Ascaya isn't the trail. It's the Clubhouse. Chef Stephen Johnson runs the culinary program there, with brunch and lunch service Thursday through Sunday and happy hour on Thursday and Friday evenings, which lines up almost too neatly with a weekend morning spent on the trail and an afternoon spent recovering from it. It's the kind of detail that only matters once you've actually made the loop from Mission Drive back through the gate and realized the timing works.

None of this changes anything about buying or selling in the neighborhood. It's just the kind of thing you'd want to know if you already live there and heard "Sloan Canyon" mentioned somewhere without knowing which patch of it they meant.

If you're curious about more of what's actually happening in the neighborhoods behind Henderson's guard gates, from trail conditions to the buildings going up around them, the Ascaya neighborhood guide from Teresa McCormick tracks it as it happens. And if a friend or neighbor ever asks who actually knows this hillside, you know who to send them to.