Exploring State Forest State Park

Our second trip of 2020 took us west of Fort Collins by a couple hours to State Forest State Park, the self proclaimed ‘moose viewing capital of Colorado’. We were skeptical initially, but it turned out to be accurate! Elisse increased her lifetime moose view count by like 5x.

After pulling into our campsite, the second thing that happened (the first being putting all our lunch food out on a picnic able) was that a moose calf and mom trotted through the campsite (conveniently ignoring the lunch). Somehow Maple was entirely oblivious, which is convenient because apparently moose view dogs as predators. (They obviously haven’t met Maple.)

Early the next day we headed up to Lake Agnes — a beautiful alpine lake surrounded on three sides by fairly steep mountain shoulders. We also caught our first views of the impressive Nokhu Crags — towering rock formations along the ridgeline separating our drainage from the adjacent Thunder Mountain drainage. We decided to make a loop of it, descending on a water ditch trail instead of the main road. Which was a good idea, until the trail started taking us farther away from our campsite instead of closer. We eventually figured after some additional map perusing how we could take a (much) lesser used connecting trail to get back to our campsite. Apart from a 5mi hike turning into a 7.5mi hike, it was a lovely day.

The next day we headed up to Thunder Pass, approaching the other side of the Nokhu Crags. The day started off strong, when we encountered a group of 6-8 moose munching in the greenery next to the parking lot. Again, Maple was oblivious. The rest of the day can fairly be described as an alpine wonderland. Rolling green hills, backing into towering ridges and peaks. We wandered around, enjoying the scenery, and quickly decided we should return for some backpacking in this beautiful area.