Escape Adventures Las Vegas, NV

Before leaving Las Vegas, we drove away from the beaten track and visited a local adventure guide company, Escape Adventures.

Escape Adventures is the only tour group in Las Vegas that uses vegetable oil for it support trucks to shuttle people and equipment (bikes, canoes, food and water) into and out of the depth of many parks (Canyonland, Grand Canyon, Moab), often going where other tour group dare not enter. We were lucky enough to come across this group when we search biofuel and Las Vegas in Google search and talk to them. Their goal is to operate completely carbon neutral while continuing to serve their customers with the level of expertise they have come to expect. Along the way, Escape Adventres are opening the eyes of their customers to alternative fuels.

Starting this past winter, Adventure guide and (in a previous life) diesel mechanic Marc Landblom converted all their multi-day tour trucks to run on vegetable oil, and is in the process of converting their remaining vehicles. Jared Fisher, Escape Adventure's president, showed us around one of their multi-day rigs - a Ford E350 van towing a supply trailer. The van contains a Golden Fuels vegetable oil converson kit, with a custom 30-gallon frame-mounted vegetable oil tank. The supply trailer holds a 75-gallon auxiliary vegetable oil tank. To refuel, there is a gravity feed hose connecting the trailer to the van's vegetable oil tank, to allow for on-the-go refueling if necessary. Fisher said that with this rig, his guides are able to complete difficult trips into the middle of nowhere without refueling.

When asked about fuel supply - Fisher and Landblom showed us their oil filtering and storage shed onsite - they collect oil from local restaurants: "Las Vegas is a great place to do this - everyone here fries stuff, and the warm weather helps with filtering." After pumping oil into the back of a pickup truck, they bring it back for settling and filtering down to 0.5 microns with a sock filter.

If you are in the Las Vegas area, looking for something to do that doesn't involve sitting in a dark, smoky room, losing your money to random chance until 4AM, go check out
Escape Adventures - you won't regret it.