Deer Creek Trail (#158)

This canyon provides beautiful scenery and easy to moderate difficulty as you run through pine forests and along occasional rock cliffs towards the upper reaches of Deer Creek. The big open views do not get extreme in any way, but you can connect to other trails that do open up the views more. There are a few options that connect for significantly longer runs. The trail is shared with motorcycles and mountain bikes, as well as equestrians. The trail begins at the Deer Creek Trailhead, where Deer Creek Road terminates. Travel almost 5 miles along Deer Creek, where the trail ends at the intersection of the Deer Creek Trail with the North Fork Deer Creek Trail (#157) and Lick Gulch Trail (#218). Ascend roughly 1000 feet as you climb, mostly gently, up the canyon. Continue your journey on another trail, or return on the same route back down Deer Creek. There are a couple of creek crossings that may be difficult to get through without getting your feet wet. One very excellent option, that skips the out-and-back, is to use the North Fork Deer Creek Road, North Fork Deer Creek Trail, and main fork of Deer Creek Trail to form a wonderful loop that is about 10.5 miles long. This loop is not terribly steep either direction your run it, and takes in roughly 1300-1400 feet of ascending. Run clockwise to climb more gently, or counter-clockwise to take in the steeper climbing on the uphill slopes of North Fork Deer Creek trail. Park at the Deer Creek TH, or anywhere along the road between the fork for the North Fork Deer Creek Trail and the main trailhead. Other variations include starting up Deer Creek, but using the north end of the Wolftone-Curran (#160) trail, Kinsey Creek (#319), or the Kinsey-Curran Connector to connect other loops or run an out-and-back. To create much longer running options, when the Deer Creek Trail ends, continue out the Lick Gulch trail to connect trails back to the Red Warrior trail and the North Fork of Deer Creek. (Notes: this description was completely rewritten by a trail runner in order to replace the old description that was copy/pasted in to populate content created by a mountain biker for the mountain biking site description.)