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Trail access assessments and advocacy

Our latest trail access advocacy projects

December 2025: Working toward a Sensory Experience Trail for Red Rock NCA visitors who are blind or visually impaired!!

After experiencing a beautiful example of such a trail created by MassAudubon on Boston's north shore, Trail Access Project's President, Ed Price, has coordinated a fabulous project team--Friends of Red Rock, the Bureau of Land Management's Red Rock National Conservation Area's planning team, the Nevada Blind Children's Foundation, and our team--to plan and build a sensory experience trail on a portion of the Moenkopi Trail at Red Rock Canyon NCA. This type of trail would have a rope guidance system and interpretive elements that would enable people who are blind and visually impaired to independently experience the magic of a Red Rock hike--the smells of the creosote after the rain, the crunch of the gravel along the trail, the lizards chirping...for the very first time.  We are currently identifying funding options for the project. Check back here for updates!

Fall 2025/Winter 2026: Before the accessible trail itself, how do we get people to the trailheads?

Our adaptive outdoor event participants’ only transportation is often Regional Transportation Commission Paratransit. Paratransit cannot be chartered and is restricted to the central Las Vegas valley. It even excludes some City of Las Vegas parks, Clark County Wetlands Park, and all surrounding public lands.

Thus, we are actively seeking funding options to provide transportation for our participants from the Las Vegas valley to natural hiking trails at Red Rock Canyon, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and the Spring Mountains around Mount Charleston--basically to get people to the trailheads where our adaptive hiking and mountain biking events start. 

This project will allow some of our participants to visit Red Rock Canyon, Lee Canyon, or Lake Mead for the very first time. 

Please let us know if you'd like to get involved in this effort!

Spring 2025: New accessible trail gates installed at 3 Red Rock Canyon NCA trails!

Trailheads!

New gates have been installed at Middle Oak Creek, South Oak Creek, and First Creek trails. These gates were installed by Friends of Red Rock at the request of Trail Access Project. Our volunteer team had advocated for the improved access to those trails for years with the BLM team at Red Rock. The gates provide first time access for people with disabilities who use specialized trail-model mobility devices, such as our TerrainHoppers, on these rugged trails. The left side of the gates includes a swing gate for able bodied pedestrians to walk through while the right side is a bridge entrance for our mobilty devices to roll. The trailheads previously had barbed wire fence-lined zig-zag entrances that were also often overgrown with vegetation through which an average able bodied person would need to be careful walking through sideways. Watch the video below to see what it's like for someone using a handcycle or TerrainHopper to hike Red Rock's beautiful, but very rocky, South Oak Creek Trail to which we now have access:

October 2023: DC Fly in to ask NV Senators Cortez-Masto and Rosen, Representatives Titus and Lee, and the BLM's Tracy Stone-Manning and her staff for equitable access to public lands

DC Fly-In Fall 2023
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In October 2023, Trail Access Project and our partners at the Conservation Lands Foundation flew to DC to hold our reps on Capitol Hill and the Bureau of Land Management leadership accountable to creating equitable access to our public lands. We delivered the message in person to Tracy Stone-Manning and her team at their Department of Interior offices, Senator Cortez Masto and her team, Senator Jacky Rosen's team, Represtenative Dina Titus and her team, and Representative Susie Lee and her team that:

America's public lands are the treasure of this country, yet not everyone can experience their beauty. The 1 in 10 americans who have a mobility disability do not have meaningful access to BLM lands in particular.

This equity of access issue impacts more than just the 1 in 10 Americans with mobility disabilities. It impacts their family and friends, as well.

In our discussions, we shared with them our vision: that all people, regardless of ability, can meaningfully experience the intangible beauty of America’s public lands. 

We asked them for support toward these outcomes: 

  1. We need an ally at the BLM. We need appropriations for and the creation of a full-time staff position at the Bureau of Land Management dedicated to leading accessibility efforts at the agency.

  2. We want the disability community to be part of the conversation. We need a citizens advisory committee at the BLM national or state levels, that includes a diverse representation of disability types (vision, physical/movement, intellectual/learning, hearing, mental health, social relationship) to provide input on their ability to meaningfully access these places.

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