High above Las Vegas

So you're in Las Vegas. What would you do?
Party till dawn on the Strip? Hang out at the casino bar and watch your sports bets live or die? Go to a show? Sleep off your hangover till noon?
Of course not. You would do exactly what I did. Drive up into the Spring Mountains (it's not that far), camp in winds strong enough to blow the lid off a dumpster, wake up at 7 a.m. to eat your Grape Nuts with dried fruit soaked in cold water, then throw your Mac in your pack (I'm training) and hike into the Mount Charleston Wilderness.

I left my new buddy Gary from Nashville at about 10,500 feet as he went on to try to bag the snow-covered ridge and summit. I was already way past my planned turnaround point and out of water. Wonder if he made it.
That is what you would do. Right?

What depression?

The amazing engineering marvel eventually called Hoover Dam was built from 1931-35, right smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression. Probably helped that desperate workers, many first- and second-generation Americans, came from all over the country to snap up the jobs. It was finished two years ahead of schedule.
It's a pretty amazing feat. How they diverted the water by blasting tunnels into the rock, how they manufactured parts onsite because they were too big to truck in, the working conditions, the amount of concrete used (a world record at the time), and so much more - all boggle my mind.
In the photo here, check out the line of cars snaking down from Arizona to cross into Nevada. It's a Friday and everyone's headed for Las Vegas. It'll take the cars at the top nearly an hour because of security measures adopted after 9/11. (Trucks must take an alternate route through Laughlin.) A bypass road is being constructed over the canyon and is scheduled to be done in November.

Here's a guess that unlike the original dam, the bypass won't be done ahead of time.