Walk the McLeod Creek Trail behind Ranch Place this month and you will still hit the detour arrow that has been posted there since spring, pointing you off the paved path and onto Bear Hollow Drive. If you have lived here long enough to remember when this project was expected to be finished by now, the sign is a reminder that the timeline has changed. If you just moved in, it probably reads as one more construction inconvenience in a town that always seems to have some.
Neither read tells the whole story. The detour is not a delay. It is the new shape of your daily loop, and it is worth learning properly, because it is going to be there every construction season for at least the next couple of years.
How the project timeline changed
The trail closures trace back to High Valley Transit's Bobsled Express, a bus rapid transit line being built along a 7.1-mile stretch of State Route 224 between Kimball Junction and Old Town. Back in 2023, the project's own estimate called for a 24-month construction period with completion expected in early 2026. Ground did not actually break until this April, and High Valley Transit now estimates the project will take through late 2028, broken into three phases, with work pausing each winter from December through March and resuming again every spring.
That is the detail that changes how you should think about the sign on the trail. The original estimate put completion in early 2026, before construction actually began that April. What touches Ranch Place and Silver Springs most directly is not the road work itself but what it has done to the trails that parallel it, and that effect is still two construction seasons away from being finished.
Where the detour actually goes
The restricted stretch of the McLeod Creek Trail runs from just north of Silver Springs Drive and Bear Hollow Drive up to Canyons Resort Drive, right along the section of highway getting widened for the new bus lanes. The posted detour sends trail users onto Bear Hollow Drive, over to Cooper Lane, and onto the Frostwood Trail before reconnecting with McLeod Creek near Canyons Resort Drive.
If you have never had a reason to use Frostwood, this is probably the first year you have. It is not a bad substitute. It runs through the same rolling terrain as the rest of the neighborhood's trail network, and for anyone biking to Canyons Village rather than walking the dog, it adds only a few extra minutes to the trip.
The west side of the highway has its own version of the same story. The Millennium Trail is restricted between Landmark Drive and Olympic Parkway, and that closure gets routed through the underpass that already exists at that crossing rather than onto a surface street. If you are coming from the Snyder's Mill or North Shore side of Silver Springs, that underpass detour is the one you will use most.
Farther south, there is a separate restriction worth knowing if your loop extends toward Old Town: the sidewalk on the west side of Park Avenue is closed between Lame Dog Lane and Empire Avenue, with an alternate crossing near Homestake Road.
Why the winter pause matters more than it sounds
High Valley Transit has been clear that construction halts every winter, which might make the disruption feel seasonal and containable. In one sense it is. You will get your unobstructed trail back every December, the same way you did this past winter.
But the pattern is the important part, not the pause. This spring was the first season of construction, and unless something changes with the project's phasing, the same detour will reappear every spring through 2028, disappear again each winter, and come back the following April. That means the Bear Hollow to Cooper Lane to Frostwood route is not a one-time inconvenience to wait out. It is worth treating it as part of the neighborhood's actual trail map for the next couple of construction seasons, the same way you would learn a permanent reroute rather than a temporary one.
Two lanes of traffic remain open in each direction on SR-224 whenever construction allows, so the disruption for anyone driving through Silver Springs to reach the highway has been lighter than the trail closures might suggest. The friction here is almost entirely on foot and on two wheels, which is exactly the group of residents who use these trails as their daily connector rather than an occasional weekend activity.
What's still worth the walk to Swaner this fall
None of this changes what makes the Ranch Place side of the neighborhood distinct in the first place: direct proximity to the Swaner Preserve, 1,200 acres of protected wetland and sagebrush upland that most of Utah's Wasatch Back does not have in its backyard. The detour reroutes how you get there. It does not change what is worth going for.
This month, that includes a new exhibition worth timing a walk around. Swaner Preserve & EcoCenter opened Ephemeral, a juried art show built around Utah's native plants, done in partnership with the Utah Native Plant Society. If your loop already ends near the EcoCenter, it is an easy stop to add before you turn back toward Ranch Place.
The Preserve also keeps a standing Saturday Nature Morning Walk on the calendar, led by a Swaner naturalist through the wetland and sagebrush sections of the trail system. It requires pre-registration, caps at fifteen participants, and closes registration at 7 a.m. the day of the walk, so it rewards planning ahead rather than showing up on a whim.
And if you are looking for a reason to extend the walk into an evening out, Park City's Dine About runs throughout October this year, its fourteenth run, with participating restaurants offering food and drink specials and new menu items for the month. It is not a Silver Springs-specific event, but for a neighborhood this close to Kimball Junction's dining options, it is the kind of local calendar item that turns a Tuesday trail walk into a reason to stay out for dinner.
The trail is different. The neighborhood underneath it isn't.
The honest version of this story is that your daily loop has looked different since this spring, and it will keep looking different every construction season through at least 2028. That is a real change, and pretending otherwise does nobody any favors. But the destination side of that loop, the wetlands, the sagebrush uplands, the Preserve's rotating exhibits and walks, hasn't moved. Neither has the reason most of us chose this side of Highway 224 in the first place: the fact that you can step off a paved trail and be in genuine open space within minutes, construction detour or not.
Learn the Bear Hollow to Cooper Lane to Frostwood route now, and the next few autumns get a lot less confusing.
I have spent more than twenty years walking these trails, watching this neighborhood change block by block, and I still think Ranch Place's proximity to the Preserve is one of the best-kept advantages in the whole Snyderville Basin. If you are weighing a move within Silver Springs, thinking about what a renovation could do to a home backing onto that open space, or just want a neighbor's read on how a specific street sits relative to the construction, I am always happy to talk it through. Let's Connect.
