Getaways: 4 ways to stay cool in Las Vegas

Summertime in Las Vegas - the largest city in the Mojave Desert - can feel like life near the sun. It’s so hot you feel your head swoon immediately upon venturing outside, so hot you start sweating in anticipation of being more than 10 feet from the nearest air-conditioner.

All Sonoma County residents know it gets hot here in summer, but even our hottest days are nothing in comparison to the average 114-degree hell they experience in Vegas.

Most visitors to Sin City and the Las Vegas Strip never experience this heat directly; they can take taxis from one mega-casino to the next, effectively staying off Las Vegas Boulevard completely. But there are other alternatives for cooling off in Las Vegas, too. At least one of them doesn’t involve anything man-made (beyond the car).

Minus5 IceBar. Perhaps the most sensible place to go to get away from the triple-digit temperatures is Minus5, a bar where everything - including the glasses - is made out of ice. The concept originated in New Zealand and appeared in Vegas in 2008 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, and again in 2010 at the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino. To experience it for yourself, you must don a (branded, of course) parka and gloves, which you must wear for the duration of your time in the bar. The bar itself has an extensive vodka selection, as well as a litany of ice carvings and other works of ice art.

Shoppes at Mandalay Place, Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (702) 740-5800, minus5experience.com. $19-$75, depending on depth of experience. Admission includes two drinks.

Arctic Ice Room at Qua Baths & Spa. Cooled to 55-degrees, the co-ed ice room inside the spa at Caesars Palace features stone-heated benches, snowflakes that cascade from the ceiling and an ice fountain that dispenses shaved ice chips to revitalize and remedy sore, tired muscles. Aqua blue glass pebbles and iridescent Sicis mosaic tiles offset by fiber optic lighting create an otherworldly backdrop. Think of the experience like sitting inside a snow-cone maker. After a tough workout (or a night with bottle service at a club), there’s no better way to whip your body into shape.

Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (702) 731-7822, caesars.com. Access free with treatment, which start at $60.

Serendipity 3. The Vegas outpost of this famous New York City ice cream shop (remember the movie with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale?) takes ice cream indulgence to the next level. Here, in a spacious restaurant across the Strip from The Cromwell, sundaes quite literally are the size of grown human heads. Among the specimens worth trying: the Frrrozen Hot Chocolate, made from a secret mix of multiple kinds of chocolate, milk and ice blended until smooth, topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Serentipity also sells sundaes with deep-fried Oreos and Twinkies.

3507 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (702) 731-7373. Desserts start at $6, Frrrozen Hot Chocolate is $13-$17.

Spring Mountains National Recreation Area. To the north and west of the Strip, a swath of public land with elevations that go up to more than 11,000 feet provides a natural chill pill to offset the desert heat. This area, technically dubbed the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, comprises Mount Charleston, the Vegas Valley’s highest point, as well as a number of canyons that naturally stay 15 to 20 degrees cooler than the Valley floor. When it’s 110 on the Strip, even 90 feels cool. If you’re feeling particularly adventuresome, the area boasts hundreds of miles of hiking trails, too.

Highway 157, Mount Charleston. Open daily, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. (702) 872-5486. Free.

Matt Villano is a writer and editor based in Healdsburg. Learn more about him at whalehead.com.