Trail Overview
Willow Creek is an 8-mile-long single track through the Uinta National Forest that starts on the west end near the Willow Creek Guard Station and follows the Willow Creek drainage for most of the trail. As it goes north, it crosses both Buffalo Canyon and French Hollow, both of which are fun trails to add to your day ride. The beginning is a fun, fast, and narrow single track through sagebrush at high elevation, side-hilling across the bottom of the hills above the drainage. It's pretty easy and smooth but does have exposure that you need to pay attention to. As you go further north, there are several very narrow sections above the creek on off-camber slopes on a loose shale surface, which makes it way more difficult and technical. You have to be really careful during these sections. Parts of the trail have also washed out by the creek, so watch out for that. There can also be overgrown sections that make it harder to follow the trail, but it just keeps going up the drainage the whole way. Several long and wide river crossings between Buffalo Canyon and French Hollow could affect the difficulty of this trail, depending on how deep they are at certain times of the year. The trail opens on 6/1, but the creek can still be pretty deep that early in the season, making the trail unpassable at certain depths. The trail closes on 10/31.
