Best Day Hikes Near Pocatello, Idaho: Why We Love City Creek and Gibson Jack

Green forested hills and blue sky above City Creek Road near Pocatello, Idaho. Photo by JF Hobbs, CC BY 3.0

Ask us for the best day hikes near Pocatello, Idaho, and you'll get two answers before you finish the question: City Creek and Gibson Jack. They're the trails we come back to again and again. Both start minutes from town, both follow a creek up into the foothills of the Bannock Range, and both feel a little different every season. Hykt™ is hiking apparel born in Idaho, and a lot of who we are comes from trails like these.

This isn't a gear list or a turn by turn guide. It's a love letter to our local trails: the roughly 50 mile City Creek network, the race that runs through it, and the wildflower meadows of Gibson Jack.

Why we love these trails

There's something special about a trail you can reach on a weeknight. No long drive, no big plan, just lace up and go. City Creek and Gibson Jack are that kind of place for us. They're where we go to clear our heads, to move, and to remember why we started Hykt™ in the first place. Every hiker has a reason they head out. We call it your Y, and these two trails are a big part of ours.

We like to hike around the City Creek area because it's close to home and our entire family can do it, and enjoy it. That's a big deal. A trail system with short loops near the trailhead and long climbs farther up means everyone gets a good day, whether that's a quick walk to the first few bridges or a long morning in the hills.

We love that they change with the year: green and shady along the creek in summer, aspens turning gold in fall, quiet and snowy in winter. We love sharing them with trail runners, bikers, families and plenty of happy dogs. And we love that they belong to everyone in Pocatello.

A short history of the City Creek trail system

City Creek's trails sit inside the City Creek Management Area, about 3,000 acres owned by the City of Pocatello. The land was set aside first to protect the city's water supply, and the trails came along with it.

It's a lot bigger than most people realize. The trail inventory in the City's 2009 management plan adds up to 54.44 miles of trails and routes, and Visit Idaho puts the system at approximately 50 miles. Call it roughly 50 miles of trail, almost all of it starting minutes from downtown.

  • 1920s and 1930s: the land comes to the city. According to the City's 2009 management plan, Congress approved selling most of the area to Pocatello on May 12, 1920. The largest transfer, about 1,915 acres, was signed by President Calvin Coolidge on November 24, 1927, with a condition that the land would revert to the United States if it ever stopped being used to protect the city's water supply. Smaller parcels followed in 1922, 1931 and 1936.
  • Trails older than the park. The same plan says the City inherited a network that grew out of the area's long history: Native American routes, logging skid roads, livestock routes, railroads, fire breaks, and telephone and power lines. In the early 1900s the most popular routes were the ones that led toward Kinport Peak.
  • The 1930s and 1987: work on the watershed. Civilian Conservation Corps crews dug contour trenches in the 1930s to reduce flooding and mudslides, and you can still see them on the hillsides. In late summer 1987 a fire burned about 2,680 acres of the lower watershed, and the Forest Service and BLM reseeded the slopes that fall.
  • 2006 to 2009: a community steps up. In 2006 a private landowner donated 42 acres with well used trails on the north end. In January 2008 trail users met as the City Creek Trail Users Group to help map and care for the network, the area was annexed into the City that same year, and the City's management plan followed in 2009.
  • Today: bridges and reroutes. City crews and volunteers keep improving the trail. In 2025 a new reroute added Bridge 10½, and the City's outdoor recreation manager told KPVI the trail now stays in the shade from top to bottom.

The creekside spine of all this is the main City Creek Trail itself, which runs 2.93 miles along the creek with about 930 feet of gain, per the City trail map, crossing the creek again and again on numbered bridges. That one trail is just the backbone. Dozens of named trails branch off it, like Bench, Rim, Serengeti, Sullivan's, Burrito and Over The Top. Every bridge and reroute is a reminder that this system exists because people kept showing up to take care of it.

The Over the Top Trail Race

If you want proof of how big the City Creek system is, look at the Over the Top Trail Race. The Pocatello Running Club, a member of the Road Runners Club of America, puts it on each spring, usually on a Saturday in early to mid May. This year's race ran May 9, 2026, and the club has announced May 8, 2027 as the tenth annual race. Runners start and finish at Centennial Park on South Grant Avenue.

The race is named for Over The Top, a single track trail the club calls "one of Pocatello Idaho's most popular and beautiful singletrack trails in the City Creek Trail System," with "scenic overlooks, wildflowers, cacti, gentle rolling climbs, flowing switchbacks." For years the longest race was a 25K. After trail updates and reroutes, today's distances are a 5K, 10K, trail half marathon and a "stout" 30K loop, about 18.6 miles.

  • Mostly single track. The club says the 30K is 90% single track and the half marathon loop is 98% single track, linking trails such as Bench, Rim, Burrito, Serengeti, Sullivan's, Under the Top and Over The Top.
  • Idaho spring weather. The club warns that race day can bring anything from the 90s on dry dirt to the 20s with slick mud or snow, and some years a large snowdrift sits atop the Over The Top climb. The course is "quite exposed" up high.
  • Light on the land. It's a paperless race. There are no cups at the aid stations, so every runner carries a bottle or collapsible cup.

The club bills it as a race for all levels, from a first laid back trail experience to a competitive run for local bragging rights. Even if you never pin on a bib, it's a great way to see how far these trails go.

Trail runners in a line on a green single track trail in the foothills above Pocatello, Idaho, under a cloudy sky. Photo courtesy of the Pocatello Running Club.
Photo courtesy of the Pocatello Running Club

Gibson Jack: wildflowers, meadows and old water

Gibson Jack sits just southwest of town on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, and it has its own deep roots. Idaho State University notes that the City of Pocatello drew drinking water from Gibson Jack Creek from 1892 to 1993, and still uses it for irrigation and fire suppression. The fenced concrete intake sits right at today's parking lot. Part of the drainage has been a Forest Service Research Natural Area since 1982.

The name runs even deeper than the trail. The U.S. Geological Survey named the Gibson Jack Formation for rock exposed along this creek, Cambrian age layers laid down in an ancient sea roughly half a billion years ago.

Gibson Jack is still part of a protected municipal watershed. Volunteers with the Idaho Trails Association repaired the bridge near the South Fork turnaround in September 2024. ITA lists the South Fork at 3.7 miles out and back with 521 feet of gain, and the trail climbs through sagebrush into aspen groves and pines.

Wildflowers and meadows

This is where Gibson Jack really shines. The Idaho Trails Association says that in late spring and early summer "the wildflowers are abundant," with monarch and swallowtail butterflies working the slopes, and it calls the trail family friendly. Watch for mountain bluebirds, broad tailed hummingbirds and western tanagers passing through, and come back in fall when the aspens turn gold.

The landscape changes as you climb. The Forest Service's Gibson Jack Creek Research Natural Area covers about 2,210 acres between roughly 5,400 and 7,214 feet, with mountain and black sagebrush in excellent condition, stands of bigtooth maple, aspen and Douglas fir, and even beaver dams and ponds. Long protected as Pocatello's watershed, it's one of the best preserved slices of the Bannock Range near town.

On the open sagebrush slopes, look for the big yellow blooms of arrowleaf balsamroot, a sunflower relative of mountain fields across the West that the Forest Service says flowers from about May to July. Timing shifts with elevation and snowpack, so the lower slopes usually bloom first and the high meadows follow.

Loving them well

The best way to love a trail is to take care of it. On City Creek, keep dogs on a short leash, and the management plan asks hikers to stay on the trail, stay off it when it's muddy, and pack out everything, pet waste included. At Gibson Jack, close every gate behind you and bring your own water, since the Forest Service lists no potable water at the trailhead.

When we head out, it's usually in whatever we grab first: a Hykt™ Trail Performance Tee for warm climbs, the Finn Two-Tone Nylon Cap for shade, a Hydration Crossbody to keep water close, and a Clip-on Pet Bandana for the four legged hikers.

If you love these trails too, we'd love to hear about it. Tag @hyktgear and tell us your Y.

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