Willow Creek Trail

Dogs Leashed

Features Commonly Backpacked · River/Creek · Views · Wildlife

Camping along this trail is limited to the established trail camps. Permits and reservations are needed for the trail camps. They can be gotten online at the Parks Canada permit/reservation website: https://reservation.pc.gc.ca/

Please review the Parks Canada website and follow Leave No Trace principles.

Willow Creek Warden Cabin (along this trail) is used for Parks Canada maintenance and other work. It is one of several backcountry warden cabins that have been around for a century or so--a working precious piece of history. The cabin and outbuildings are for maintenance work, and not open to the public.

Willow Creek Trail is found at a public staging area near the west end of Rock Lake in Rock Lake Provincial Park. The trailhead signs can be a bit confusing, as the only trail here also has a sign for Wildhay Trail, a Rock Lake Provincial Park trail, which overlaps Willow Creek Trail here. To make things even more confusing, the trail, immediately enters into Willmore Wilderness, not Jasper National Park, and on The Willmore trail maps, the trail here is Mountain Trail which also overlaps with Willow Creek Trail here. Anyway, bottom line, the only trail here is the beginning of Willow Creek Trail. It starts off in the fir forest as a very wide, rocky, fire road trail. After going up a hill, at the 1.0 mile mark, there is a well marked split in the trail, with Willow Creek Trail going left/south onto singletrack trail.

Willow Creek Trail continues in forest, and at the 1.7 mile mark, starts a big, wide loop to the west over the next mile, to avoid going through a wet, forested, swampy area seen below, to the left. At about the 3.4 mile mark, with little fanfare, the trail crosses from The Willmore into Jasper National Park. Still in the forest, continuing on, Rock Creek is reached and must be forded at the 4.6 mile mark. Here, the creek spreads over gravel flats, making it a relatively easy ford starting in August. After fording Rock Creek, the trail returns to the forest for a while.

At the 5.5 mile mark, Willow Creek Trail breaks out of the forest into expansive, willowy meadows with great views of distant mountains, and that can be rather wet in places. In particular, over the next couple miles, hiking in the open meadows, it is not uncommon to end up walking through ankle deep water hidden under the grass and willows, with no good way around the water. After enough of this water, the trail heads for the east edge of the meadows and higher, dryer ground, where it will sometimes be in the trees and other times be in open area.

At the 7.7 mile mark, Willow Creek Trail comes to a grassy open area with Willow Creek Warden Cabin and its outbuildings, at the south end of this grassy area. Continue straight here, passing the buildings and re-entering forest for the next mile, and then a short burn area with broad meadows and mountain views to the right/west. After 8.9 miles, coming out of the burn area into the meadows, Willow Creek Trail ends at the North Boundary Trail junction.

Fir forest, and meadows of willows and grass. There are a lot of animal tracks. Deer, elk, moose, wolves, bears, mountain lions, and more all call this home.