Willis Creek: walking through the narrows

Welcome to Willis Creek, one of the friendliest slot canyons in southern Utah. The creek is usually just an inch or two of water over clean sand, and the narrows begin right after the road.

One rule before we go in: slot canyons and storms don't mix. Rain miles upstream can send a flash flood through here, even under blue sky. If storms are building, stay out and wait it out on high ground.

I'll tell you a story at each spot and stay quiet in between.

You're at the trailhead, where Skutumpah Road crosses Willis Creek.

The road's name is old. It's credited to John D. Lee, a Mormon pioneer, borrowing a Paiute word that's often translated as the place where rabbitbrush grows and squirrels can be found. Lee is a complicated figure in Utah history. In November 1874, he was arrested at his home near here, at Skutumpah.

This country has long been a crossroads: Paiute homeland, pioneer route, ranch country and, for decades, wild public land. Follow the creek downstream, and the walls will rise around you.

Here the canyon tightens into its first narrows. Early on there's a short drop of a few feet, a little pour-over you can climb down or walk around.

This whole slot was cut by water. Most of the year, the creek is a trickle. But when a storm hits upstream, a flood comes down this channel, loaded with sand and gravel, and works like sandpaper. Year after year, flood after flood, it scours the channel deeper and polishes the walls smooth.

Run your hand along the rock. That smoothness took thousands of floods.

This is the heart of the narrows. The walls here are Navajo Sandstone, the same rock that forms the White Cliffs of the Grand Staircase.

It began as sand dunes. Around two hundred million years ago, this region was a vast desert of dunes, among the largest the continent has ever had. Look for long, slanting lines in the walls. Those are the faces of ancient dunes, preserved as the wind left them.

The dark streaks running down the rock are desert varnish, a thin coating built up slowly over a very long time. You're walking through a fossil desert, with a creek running through it.

This is where Averett Canyon comes in from the north, and the main narrows begin to widen. Many people turn around here.

The side canyon carries a hard story. In August 1866, during the Black Hawk War, a young militiaman named Elijah Averett was killed nearby in an attack. He was twenty-one. Cowboys kept a stone cairn at his grave for years, and in 1936 church leaders from Panguitch placed a monument there.

It's a reminder that this quiet canyon was once contested ground, a hard frontier for everyone who lived here.

From here, the canyon is wider, and the walls grow taller as the creek keeps cutting down through the Grand Staircase.

This country holds some of the most important dinosaur fossils in North America. To the east, in the Kaiparowits and Wahweap formations, scientists have found Kosmoceratops, a horned dinosaur with the most ornate skull known, and Lythronax, the gore king, one of the oldest tyrannosaurs on the continent.

The land here was part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from 1996. The boundaries have changed several times since, most recently in 2026. Today, it's public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. When you're ready, the way back is the same creek. Just down the road is Bull Valley Gorge, where a truck has been wedged in the slot since 1954. Ask about it on the drive.