The drive up South Willow Canyon
Southwest of Grantsville Along Willow Creek Into the Stansburys
From Grantsville you aim for the mountains southwest of town, and within a few miles the valley grid hands off to South Willow Canyon Road, which threads into the mouth of the canyon. Willow Creek runs beside you the whole way up, and the walls close in as the road gains height. The forest shifts as you climb, from Gambel oak and juniper down low into cottonwood, maple and fir higher up, so the shade deepens and the air cools the farther you go.
Most of that climb is on pavement, and it is an easy, pretty drive that any car can make. The catch waits near the top. Somewhere past the middle campgrounds the asphalt ends and the last few miles turn to narrow dirt, pitted with potholes and pinched tight against the creek and the rock. It is passable for a standard car in dry weather if you take it slow, but it is no place for a trailer, and a wet spell turns it greasy in a hurry.
That upper dirt is what carries you to the head of the canyon and the Loop Campground trailhead, where the road quits and the wilderness begins. The entries below work up the canyon in that order: the campgrounds first, then the peak and the backcountry above the trailhead, then the reservoir that sits down on the valley floor.
The details
The Forest Service campgrounds
Cottonwood to Loop First come first served No drinking water
The canyon's real draw for most Grantsville families is the camping, and it is stacked up the road like rungs on a ladder. Working up from the bottom you pass Cottonwood near 6,080 feet, then Intake around 6,320, then Boy Scout, then Lower Narrows and Upper Narrows, and finally Loop at roughly 7,400 feet where the pavement gives out. Each is a small, quiet pocket in the trees with the creek close at hand, and the higher ones open later in the season as the snow retreats.
Keep your expectations rustic. These are old Forest Service sites, most of them just a handful of spots with fire rings, tables and a vault toilet, run first come first served rather than by reservation. Upper Narrows in particular is primitive, its sites scattered loosely along a mile of road. The one thing every camper needs to know is that none of them have drinking water, so you haul in every drop you plan to use and pack your trash back out.
Because the good spots are few and the canyon is close to the whole valley, summer weekends fill early. A weeknight or the shoulder weeks of spring and fall are the quiet play, and the Loop sites at the top double as base camp for anyone heading up Deseret Peak the next morning.
The details
Deseret Peak and the wilderness
11,031 feet 1984 wilderness From the Loop trailhead
Above the last campground, the ground keeps climbing to Deseret Peak, 11,031 feet at the summit. It is the highest point in the Stansbury Mountains and the roof of Tooele County, and on a clear day the view from the top runs out over the Great Salt Lake, the salt desert and range after range fading west. Everything above the trailhead falls inside the Deseret Peak Wilderness, about 25,500 acres that Congress set aside under the 1984 Utah Wilderness Act, which means no vehicles and no bikes past the boundary, just boots.
The climb is a real one, not a stroll. The standard hike leaves the Loop Campground trailhead near 7,400 feet and gains something like 3,600 feet on its way to the summit, roughly eight to nine miles round trip depending on the line you take. Many hikers make a loop of it, going up by way of the Mill Fork meadows and the south ridge and coming down a different drainage back to the same lot. Give it a full day, start early, and carry more water and warm layers than a valley morning suggests you will need.
This is high, exposed country, and summer afternoons build thunderstorms fast over the ridge, so the summit is a morning goal. Snow lingers on the north-facing pitches into July some years and returns early in fall, which is the other half of why the trailhead is a warm season proposition.
The details
South Willow Lake and the Medina Flat trails
Backcountry lake Medina Flat trailhead On foot only
Tucked high in the Stansburys, off in the wilderness north of the peak, is South Willow Lake, a small alpine tarn most people never see. There is no road to it and no shortcut. You earn it on foot, which is exactly why it stays quiet even on a busy summer weekend down in the campgrounds.
The way in leaves from the Medina Flat trailhead, which sits across the canyon road from the Loop Campground entrance and also serves as the low end of the Stansbury Front Trail. From there the route works up through the Mill Fork drainage into the high country and over to the lake basin. It is a long day out and back, so treat it like the summit hike: an early start, real water and food, and layers for weather that changes fast up high.
The same trailhead is the gateway to the rest of the range's backcountry, so it is worth knowing about even if the lake itself is more than you want to take on. The Stansbury Front Trail traces the foot of the mountains for miles, opening up shorter walks and longer ridgeline days from the very same parking area.
The details
Grantsville Reservoir on the valley floor
Four miles south of town Mormon Trail Road Open year round
Not everyone wants the climb, and the canyon has a low-country companion. Grantsville Reservoir sits about four miles south of town on Mormon Trail Road, reached by heading south out of the grid rather than up into the mountains, though it draws its water off the same South Willow Creek that feeds the canyon. It is the flat-water counterpart to the peak: a place to put in a boat, drop a line, or camp within easy reach of home.
The fishing is the point. The reservoir is stocked with rainbow trout and also holds brown trout, smallmouth bass and yellow perch, and it earns a following in winter as a perch water for ice fishing once it locks up. Tooele County runs the shoreline as a year round recreation area with pavilions, tables and grills, but keep the same rule in mind as the canyon: there are vault toilets and no drinking water, so come stocked.
It is a working desert reservoir, not a manicured park, and the water level rises and falls with the season and the runoff. On a hot weekend it is busy with valley families; on a weekday morning in the off season you may have the bank to yourself.
