A nice, but long, Summit County hike on the Willow Lakes Trail

Eagles Nest, Willowbrook and Willowbrook Highlands homeowners

have easy access to this trail as it leaves from the upper reaches of their subdiviisons.  The main trailhead is at the top of Willowbrook, and from there to Willow lakes is about 5 miles.  With side trips to the other Willow lakes and Salmon lake, you can extend it to just over 13 miles round trip, as we did.   The Summit County Hiker, my hiking bible, shows it as a “most difficult” trail.  I scoffed for the first 3 miles, as I decided that it must be rated that way because of the length of it.  However, after mile 3, the trail steepens and is a long slog from there almost to the lakes.  Then there is a little up and down getting to the lakes themselves.  I dislike going downhill while hiking out because it means uphill on the way back, when it should be easy all the way home! 

We took the side trip to Salmon lake and it was worth it.  The trail sign has an arrow pointing UP to Salmon lakes, and it is right; more up and over a point of land, then down the other side to the valley with the lake in it.  A pretty lake though, worth the extra mile or so. 

The best part of the hike was from the Salmon trail turnoff to Willow lakes.  You cross lots of creeks and wetlands getting to the chain of little lakes, and the wildflowers were incredible!  We saw Monkshood, Elephant head, Kings crown, Queens crown, Chiming bells, Paintbrush and Jacobs ladder, to mention only a few.  Once there, you are in a little valley with the jagged edge of the Zodiac Ridge above.  We noticed a sign asking that we please not feed the goats, so we looked around hopefully for them, but didn’t see any.  It was the perfect rocky kind of environment they like, but all we saw were a marmot and squirrels, with pika squeaking out their alarm calls as background noise.   Along the way you have some great views of Buffalo, Red Mountain, Thorn, and what I think is Willow Peak (the one attached to the Thorn.) The sky clouded up as we headed back,and we ended up with rain gear on, but no thunder nearby. 

This hike took us 8 hours, from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.  Allow plenty of time to explore and of course, you will want a lunch stop.  It is one of the best hikes I have done, and we have hiked a lot of Summit County trails.  It is a great combination of length, elevation gain, and the rewards of the hike; views and wildflowers. 

Another blog post you might enjoy is one (with photos of the mountain goats) about our hike on Buffalo Mountain.

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Posted by Summit County Real Estate Agent Joanne Hanson at 8:07 pm in Mountains of fun. Subscribe to comments RSS feed.

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