Willow Creek Park is one of Sandy's favourite free sledding hills, a big, welcoming city park on the east bench of the Salt Lake Valley that turns into a happy chaos of sleds and tubes whenever the Wasatch delivers. Its great advantage is its shape: the park is built like a large natural basin, with the parking and pavilion up on the rim and a wide grassy field at the bottom, which means the whole thing is essentially a purpose-shaped sledding bowl with a long, open, obstacle-free runout.

That basin layout is what makes it work so well for families. You can park at the top, walk a few steps, and start sledding, with the big grassy floor giving plenty of room to stop, and enough choice of pitch around the rim that little kids and older ones can each find a line that suits them. It's used for both sledding and tubing, and on a good snow day the bowl fills with neighbourhood families.

The park sits at 8375 Highland Drive, essentially where Creek Road meets Highland Drive (2000 East) in Sandy, and it's open daily from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. It's free and unsupervised, so bring your own sled or tube; there are no rentals or attendants. One rule worth knowing before you go: sledding is permitted only in the park's designated areas, a Sandy City rule that keeps sledders away from the parts of the park that aren't suited to it, so it's worth looking for the posted areas when you arrive.

Outside of winter, Willow Creek is a well-equipped neighbourhood park in its own right, with a baseball field, soccer field, tennis court, a running trail, a playground, a pavilion, barbecue areas and restrooms. That makes it a year-round spot rather than a one-season hill, and the facilities are handy even in winter when you need somewhere warm to send the kids for a break.

As with any sledding hill, the fun outruns the caution. Speeds pick up quickly once the snow packs down or ices over, and a city park means light poles, trees, fences and other sledders in the runout, so a clear look at where you'll stop and an adult watching younger kids makes the difference. Helmets are never a bad call.

The best runs come right after a fresh snowfall, before the bowl gets skied out and icy, and mornings tend to be quieter than afternoons. Dress in waterproof layers and real boots, bring your own sled, park considerately in the neighbourhood, and haul out everything you bring in, including any sleds that don't survive the day. It's simple, free, five minutes from home for half of Sandy, and exactly what a winter afternoon should be.