Step inside City National Arena on a summer afternoon when it’s 110 outside and the Strip is a shimmering mirage in the distance, and the first thing you feel is the cold. Not air-conditioning cold—we’ve all got that. This is the kind that makes you pull your fleece a little tighter and reminds you that summer, brutal as it is, isn’t inescapable. It’s just inescapable out there.
If you’ve got ice fever, City National Arena is the place to channel it. I recently took the adult Learn to Skate program at the Vegas Golden Knights Skating Academy, a seven-week course that uses the Learn to Skate USA curriculum and covers the fundamentals. No experience necessary, just a willingness to wobble a bit until you find your feet over your skates.
My skating history is modest. Back when I lived in New York, I’d loop around the parks in winter—nothing serious, just enough to say I could do it. When I moved to Las Vegas, I took up hiking and forgot all about those skates in the garage. Then came the Winter Olympics, and I remembered I still had them. Donate or dust them off? That’s when I found out about the Learn to Skate program and figured: with summer coming, why not learn a new skill that’ll get me out of the heat?
Carolyn Mortenson, senior director of skating programs for the Vegas Golden Knights Skating Academy, has watched the appetite for skating in Las Vegas grow into something she couldn’t have predicted when she joined the program in March 2021. Our hometown heroes deserve a lot of the credit.
“When the Golden Knights became a franchise, if you weren’t a hockey fan, you became one,” Mortenson says. That fandom found its way to the rinks—not just the kids, but adults who had never considered lacing up before.
Mortenson recommends figure skates for beginners over hockey skates. The balance comes more naturally, and the blade sits differently underfoot. As for falling? “You’re gonna fall,” she says, “and you’ll get right back up.”
The very first thing I learned in class was exactly that: how to fall and get back up safely. From there it was marching across the ice, then gliding, then swizzles, then something that almost resembled skating backwards.
What surprised me most was how completely the ice takes over your attention. I’m a hiker—Red Rock is practically my backyard, and I can scramble up those rocks with muscle memory to spare. The ice is a different world entirely. Every brain cell is occupied: march, glide, bend your knees, arms out, don’t look down. Each lesson runs just 30 minutes, but the concentration makes it feel twice as long and twice as good.
“We always need to exercise our brain,” Mortenson says. “We need to go out and learn new skills as we’re getting older, so we keep it working.”
She compares it to learning a dance routine count by count. It’s the same satisfaction when a thing finally clicks into place. And the benefits carry: Balance built on a blade shows up on trails, on stairs, in the small physical negotiations of everyday life.
Ice skating is an old pleasure, and an enduring one. It trends up every hockey season and every four years when the Olympics put it center stage—who can watch Alysa Liu’s gold-medal performance at the Milan Games or Ilia Malinin’s impossible quad axel and not feel awe at what the human body can do?
For us locals, the bar is lower but the feeling is the same. All we need to do is step on the ice and feel the cold rush of joy in the middle of the summer heat.
Vegas Golden Knights Skating Academy at City National Arena citynationalarena.com
Ready to lace up?
Even if lessons aren’t on your agenda, these rinks welcome everyone for public skating, and they’re a genuinely good way to beat the heat.
City National Arena
America First Center in Henderson
The VGK practice facility in Summerlin has some of the smoothest ice in town, favored by figure skaters and hockey enthusiasts alike. Watch the city’s littlest ice shredders twirl, spin and stick-handle their way around the rink. Afterward, grab pizza upstairs at MacKenzie River and browse VGK gear at The Arsenal on your way out. 1550 S. Pavilion Center Dr., citynationalarena.com.
America First Center
The practice facility for the Henderson Silver Knights on Water Street draws smaller crowds than its Summerlin sibling but delivers the same quality ice, plus a cozy little pub inside if you need to warm up after your session. 222 S. Water St., Henderson., americafirstcenter.com.
Hylo Park Arena
For serious hockey types, this northwest-side rink is all skate, no frills—and parking is free. It’s also home to SkateDaddy, where you can shop for skates and apparel or get your blades sharpened before hitting the ice. 2400 N. Rancho Dr., hyloparkarena.com.
Las Vegas Ice Center
This west-side community rink on Flamingo is a neighborhood staple—popular for kids’ birthday parties, open for public skate daily and stocked with a snack bar for mid-session refueling. 9295 W. Flamingo Rd., lasvegasice.com.
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