Butler Creek, Grant Creek, and Snowbowl

For some good gravel/dirt riding with a lot of climbing, butler creek is a good place to check out. While most people think of snowbowl as being up Grant creek, it is actually in the Butler creek drainage, which is the next one over. From Grant Creek, when you turn onto snowbowl road, you climb over a saddle into butler. Snowbowl road climbs the east side of butler creek and ends at the ski area. There is also a road on the other side from Butler creek, and you can make a loop out of the two on a bike. On top of that, you can ride to the top of tv mountain, snowbowl, and point 6 on actual road, and there's some singletrack down the front of the ski hill.

Getting to snowbowl via snowbowl road is pretty straightforward, so I don't think I need to go into much detail. But if you've never been in butler creek it's nice to have a map or gpx track to follow, as there are a couple of junctions up there. The main thing to keep in mind is that you actually want to take Point 6 road when you get there, as that is the actual name of the road that continues to the top of Butler creek (and all the way to Point 6).

The most basic route is to climb to the base of snowbowl via one of the roads, and descend the other

My preference is to climb grant creek and snowbowl rd, as that way is a more gradual, consistent grade. Snowbowl road is also gravel and can be pretty loose and washboardy, so depending on conditions it can be a pretty unpleasant ride down. Butler Creek/point 6 sees basically no traffic and is hard packed, mostly smooth dirt, and is much more comfortable at 20-30mph on cross tires.

To get down butler creek from snowbowl, you go out the back of the parking lot. There's a bit more climbing before you descend, and you come to a few junctions. If your goal is to descend butler creek you pretty much want to just keep going straight and down.

Here's that first junction:

You go past that big pile of gravel on the left to continue around the back of tv mountain or down butler creek. If you went right, it would take you up the front of snowbowl on 2nd thought. This is a fairly unpleasant, steep climb even on a mountain bike, and if you are planning to go farther up, I would suggest continuing around tv mountain to point 6 road instead. There are two roads that go around the back, one higher and one lower, and they start within about 50 yards of each other.

The low road goes to the base of the Lavelle chair and then switchbacks up to meet the upper road, and is a more gradual climb. You also get a better view into the Lavelle drainage so this is my preferred way up. Here's that junction, you can see the lower road is right there

If you are just going down Butler, keep going straight and you'll wind up at the bottom without needing to worry much about any turns or junctions. If you want to go to the top of Snowbowl, TV mountain, or Point 6, then go up one of those roads.

The road crosses the back of snowbowl a few times and then heads up to point 6. The above track doesn't get that far. To go to the A-frame, you take a sharp right off the road before crossing under the chair and a road will take you up there. You can also descend under the griz chair and hit the singletrack to the base area.