Plan Your Trip
A 4,059-foot climb, a summit a shade over 9,900 feet, and a road UDOT plows all season. Here is what that asks of your tires, your timing and your day.
At a glance
The honest answer to “can we get up there in winter?” is almost always yes. Highway 14 is a plowed, year-round state highway, and most winter days it is bare pavement or packed snow that any car handles. The trips that go wrong are not the ones with the wrong car — they are the ones that start too late, on worn tires, with no chains in the trunk, on the afternoon a storm is landing.
This page is the driving side of a winter trip: the climb itself, what Utah's traction law actually requires, how much snow is on the ground month by month, how early the light goes, and what to do when UDOT closes the canyon. For what to do once you are here — snowmobile trails from the village, groomed ski loops at Deer Hollow, Brian Head, Cedar Breaks on snowshoes — see the winter guide.
Cedar City sits at 5,846 feet. The village sits at about 8,455 feet. In between, Highway 14 climbs 4,059 feet in seventeen miles, crosses a summit at 9,905 feet, and only then drops into the meadows. That shape explains nearly everything about winter here: why the forecast you read for Cedar City is useless, why the road can be dry at the bottom and packed at the top, and why a two-wheel-drive car with summer tires can be fine for twelve miles and then stop climbing.
Two practical consequences. First, 12.1 miles of the drive sit above 9,000 feet, so plan for a snow-covered surface up there even when the valley is clear and dry. Second, the summit is west of the Cedar Breaks junction, which means you climb past the highest point and then descend to the village. Coming down a grade on packed snow is where most winter trouble on this road starts, not going up it. Low gear, long following distance, no cruise control.
Utah does not require chains all winter. It has a traction law, Utah Administrative Code R920-6, that UDOT or law enforcement switches on for designated stretches of highway when conditions call for it. You are told by road signs, message boards, the UDOT Traffic app and UDOT's own social accounts — not by a website you checked yesterday.
When it is posted, this is the minimum kit, straight from UDOT's traction law summary:
| Your vehicle | Minimum | Also acceptable |
|---|---|---|
| Two-wheel drive under 12,000 lb | Three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) tires on all four wheels | Chains or snow socks on both drive tires |
| All-wheel or four-wheel drive | M+S (mud and snow) tires on all four wheels | 3PMSF tires, or chains and socks |
| Over 12,000 lb — motorhomes, buses, trucks | Chains or socks on all drive tires | One tire per dual-mounted pair counts |
UDOT's traction law map classifies segments. Highway 14 from Cedar City east across the plateau is a Class I segment, where a posted requirement applies to vehicles over 12,000 pounds gross weight — motorhomes, buses, box trucks, heavy tow rigs. Highway 143 up Parowan Canyon to Brian Head is Class II, where it applies to every vehicle on the road. If your trip includes a ski day at Brian Head, that is the drive with the stricter rule, and it is worth knowing before you are sitting at the bottom of the canyon behind a trooper. The winter route, the SR-143 rule and the live canyon cameras are on our getting to Brian Head page.
One more piece of internet folklore to clear up: the 5/32-inch tread requirement you will find in Utah traction-law articles belongs to the Class 3 designation written for Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons outside Salt Lake City. It does not apply here. What does apply statewide is the plain tread law — any tire under 2/32 inch is illegal, in any season, and is also the reason a car slides on a grade it should have climbed.
All-wheel drive helps you start moving and keeps you tracking on a packed climb. It does nothing for stopping and nothing for cornering — those are entirely the tires, which is why the traction law is written about rubber and not about drivetrains. A front-wheel-drive car on true winter tires will out-drive an all-wheel-drive SUV on worn all-seasons on this road, and the SUV's extra confidence is exactly what gets it going too fast for the descent into the village.
If you carry chains, fit them at the bottom, in a pullout, before you need them — not on a grade in the dark with traffic going by. And fit them to the drive wheels: front on a front-wheel-drive car, rear on a rear-wheel-drive truck.
Most guests arrive in a rental car picked up at a desert airport, and rental fleets in Las Vegas and St. George are built for the desert: two-wheel drive, all-season tires, no chains in the trunk, and frequently a rental agreement that forbids fitting chains at all. That is a fine car for this road on a clear day and a poor one in an active storm.
What to do about it, in order of how much it helps:
Salt Lake City arrivals have a longer run but the same finish: I-15 south for about four hours to Cedar City, then the same Highway 14 climb, with the same tire rules on the same Class I segment. Most Salt Lake rental fleets run all-season M+S tires rather than true winter tires, which satisfies the traction law on an AWD car but not on a two-wheel-drive one, so check the sidewall before you leave the lot and plan the Cedar City stop for fuel and food before the climb.
Coming from further afield, the approach matters too. From Las Vegas or St. George you climb I-15 to Cedar City before you ever start the canyon; from the east on US-89 you join Highway 14 at Long Valley Junction and climb the gentler side. Our getting here page has the route detail, and the Las Vegas drive guide maps the whole run.
There are no weather stations in the village itself, but two NRCS SNOTEL stations bracket it: Harris Flat at 7,800 feet, about 9 minutes away and 600 feet below us, and Midway Valley at 9,830 feet, 1,400 feet above — which happens to be close to the elevation of the summit you drive over. Everything below is measured at those two, with the village figure interpolated between them and labeled as the estimate it is.
| Month | Typical high | Typical low | Median snow on the ground | Days with snow cover | Sunset, 15th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November | 45°F | 21°F | 2" | 45% | 5:21 PM |
| December | 35°F | 14°F | 11" | 85% | 5:14 PM |
| January | 36°F | 14°F | 21" | 94% | 5:36 PM |
| February | 38°F | 16°F | 30" | 92% | 6:10 PM |
| March | 45°F | 21°F | 29" | 86% | 7:38 PM |
| April | 52°F | 24°F | 16" | 53% | 8:06 PM |
Temperatures are NOAA 1991–2020 normals interpolated between the Alton (7,100 ft) and Brian Head (9,770 ft) stations; depth and snow-cover figures come from the SNOTEL archive. Sunset times are computed for the village and shown in local time, so the March and April jumps include daylight saving.
The pattern that matters for driving: first snow usually arrives around October 15 at the upper station and November 16 at the lower one, the ground holds snow through March, and January nights sit near 14°F with afternoons near 36°F. That freeze-and-thaw cycle is what puts ice on the road in the shade of Cedar Canyon on an otherwise sunny afternoon. For today's actual depth at both stations, our snow report reads them live.
This is the single most common winter planning mistake we see, and it costs nothing to fix. In mid-December the sun is up at 7:39 AM and down at 5:14 PM. A four-o'clock departure from Cedar City means finishing the climb in the dark, and dark on a snow-packed grade with no streetlights, no shoulder and deer at the meadow edges is a different road than the one you drove up in July.
Build the day backwards from that marker. If you are flying into Las Vegas, an afternoon flight rarely gets you up the canyon in daylight in December — either book the morning flight or plan a night in Cedar City or St. George and climb in the morning. If you are coming off a day in Zion or Bryce, leave the park earlier than feels necessary; the drive home gains elevation the whole way.
It is worth knowing the standard the plows work to, because it tells you exactly when the road changes character. Every UDOT maintenance station runs a Snow Plan designed to keep at least one lane open in each direction when snow is accumulating at one inch per hour or less. Above that rate, crews are pulled onto higher-priority routes first, and a plowed lane becomes a packed lane.
So the question on a storm day is not “is it snowing?” — it is “how hard, and for how long?” A two-inch afternoon is a normal drive with winter tires. A six-inch, one-inch-an-hour system is a good afternoon to eat lunch in Cedar City and let the plows get a cycle ahead of you. And when UDOT does close Highway 14 it is typically for hours while crews clear Cedar Canyon, not for days. The road's long closures in living memory came from landslides, not snow: the 2011 slide near milepost 8 took out roughly 1,300 feet of roadway and kept the highway shut for months.
The five-minute check before you drive
And a note for anyone planning to leave the road corridor: the Utah Avalanche Center does not publish a daily forecast for southwest Utah. It collects observations from the Brian Head and Cedar Mountain backcountry, which is useful, but it is not a rated danger level. Snowmobilers, skiers and snowshoers here are making their own call on terrain — read the observations, and treat steep, wind-loaded slopes with the respect a forecast would have told you to.
None of this is exotic. It is the difference between a delay and an incident.
You have just moved to 8,400 feet, in dry, cold air, probably from sea level. Drink more water than you want to, go easy on the first evening, and expect to sleep poorly the first night — that is altitude, not the bed. Cold at this elevation is a dry cold and it is very manageable; the wind at the summit is the part that bites. Sunglasses matter more than people expect, because snow at 9,000 feet throws light back at you all day.
Check in before dark if you can. It makes the arrival a pleasure instead of a navigation exercise, and it leaves the evening for the thing winter here is actually best at: a very dark, very clear sky over a very quiet village.
The questions guests ask us on the phone in December.
Not usually. Highway 14 is plowed all winter, and on a clear day a two-wheel-drive car on decent tires makes the climb without drama. What matters more than the drivetrain is the tires and the timing: proper winter tires, chains in the trunk, and a departure that gets you up the canyon in daylight and not in the middle of a storm.
Yes. SR-14 is a year-round plowed state highway, not a seasonal road. UDOT closes it occasionally during or right after a big storm, usually for hours while crews clear Cedar Canyon. The seasonal closure people confuse it with is Highway 148 through Cedar Breaks, which does gate shut from about mid-November to late May.
Only when UDOT posts the traction law, and SR-14 is a Class I traction segment, which means the requirement is aimed at vehicles over 12,000 pounds — motorhomes, buses and trucks — rather than every car. Carry chains anyway from December through March: the law is the floor, not the advice, and a posted restriction can appear while you are already on the road.
Under Utah Administrative Code R920-6, an all-wheel or four-wheel-drive vehicle needs M+S tires on all four wheels as the minimum, and a two-wheel-drive vehicle under 12,000 pounds needs three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) tires on all four. Chains and snow socks satisfy the requirement for either. Statewide, any tire below 2/32 inch of tread is illegal year-round.
Enough to change the trip. At village elevation the median depth on the ground works out to about 11 inches in December and 30 inches in February, and there is snow on the ground on roughly 94 percent of January days. First snow typically falls around October 15 at the 9,830-foot station and November 16 at the 7,800-foot one. Those are interpolated from the two NRCS SNOTEL stations that bracket the village, and our snow report reads both of them live.
In mid-December the sun sets at the village at 5:14 PM, so leaving Cedar City by about 4:00 PM gets you up Highway 14 in daylight with slack for plow traffic. On a storm day, leave earlier or wait it out over a meal in town rather than climbing the canyon in the dark behind a plow.
Not a daily one. The Utah Avalanche Center does not issue regular forecasts for southwest Utah, though it does collect and publish observations from the Brian Head and Cedar Mountain backcountry. That matters for anyone leaving the road corridor on a sled, skis or snowshoes — you are working from observations and your own judgement, not a rated danger level.
It is legal and people do it, but understand what you are asking of the vehicle: a 4,059-foot climb with a two-mile stretch near 7 percent, then a descent into the village. Over 12,000 pounds gross weight you are the vehicle the traction law is written for, so carry chains for all drive tires. Snowmobile trailers are common here; time the climb for a clear day.
Reviewed October 2026
We live in the village and drive Highway 14 through the storms. The numbers here are not ours, though: the route, elevations and grades come from an OSRM trace sampled against USGS 3DEP elevation data; the traction requirements come from Utah Administrative Code R920-6 and UDOT's own traction law summary and segment map; the plowing standard is UDOT's published winter maintenance policy; snow depths and snow-covered days come from the two NRCS SNOTEL stations that bracket the village; and temperatures are NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals interpolated to 8,400 feet. Conditions change hourly in winter, so check the live sources below before you commit to the climb.
Live conditions and the rest of the winter planning set.
Live snow depth and the 48-year record for Duck Creek Village, from two SNOTEL stations minutes away.
See pageWinter trail planning near Duck Creek.
See pageWinter-ready rooms and cabins with trailer parking near the Markagunt groomed trails.
See snowmobile lodgingLive SR-14 cameras, current mountain weather, and closure detours before you drive up.
See pageCabins for longer stays, extra space, kitchens, and select pet-friendly trips.
See cabinsChoose your season for hiking, foliage, snow, or quiet mountain air
Plan thisDirections, drive times, and what to expect on the final climb
Plan thisRooms and cabins in the village, five minutes off Highway 14.
Book a room or cabin at Duck Creek Village Inn — five minutes off Highway 14, with the snowmobile trailhead in the village and the plows working the road you came in on.
