Minnesota Hiking Club #37 - Afton State Park

 

Minnesota Hiking Club

#37 - Afton State Park

Date Hiked: February 27th, 2025

Other Hikes That Day: None

Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 2.92

The W-code restriction was lifted! 

Those 19 parks, for which I respected the rules, kept me from finishing this even faster than I intended. By the time I hiked Afton here after work in late February, there were only 4 non-W parks left, so the timing of that false hope of early nice weather in Minnesota allowed me some flexibility. 

I'd heard a lot about Afton State Park, even before I started exploring the parks themselves. I suppose its proximity to the Twin Cities doesn't hurt. Despite that being the major population center of the state, there aren't many state parks within what most would consider a reasonable distance, and I say most because traveling ridiculous distances stopped bothering me a long time ago. I drive 16 hours back home without much of a struggle and in one shot. Point being, Afton is comparatively close than most of the state parks on the map, and because most people don't view five hour drives as short Sunday excursions, it gets a lot of attention.

The ski culture is readily apparent when approaching through the winding road. Even on the day where I was setting out because the snow on the trail was gone, the snow hills were alive and well. I say "hills" affectionately, because to those from this area, they might be mountains the same way the Appalachians were mountains to me growing up. Once I visited Utah, California, and Washington though, they became rolling green hills.

The hill on the Afton Hiking Club trail didn't seem so small when I was trying to determine what was ice and what was slush though.

For a park that's well known for its hikes, I have to admit I expected a little more from Afton. Something more like William O'Brien State Park's Hiking Club trail, for instance, though I didn't yet have that basis of comparison. As one of the descending St. Croix parks, it has a lot to live up to. It's shorter, like Interstate State Park (still awkward phrasing even when writing it), but whereas theirs is a down-and-back along a cliffside with tons of rocks, Afton is... Well, it's not really a loop, it's two loops. There's a small prairie loop along the interpretive trail, and then there's the bigger one that starts along the river, descends into the woods, and then makes one gain most of the elevation right before the end. I suppose if you did it the other way, that would also be true, but I digress.

I imagine I'll be visiting Afton in warmer and less slushy, muddy times, as by the time this has posted, I'll have hiked with another AllTrails user for the first time since I started on the app in April of 2024. In a state that has the mother of all lakes, that's tough competition for epic views and challenging trails. Afton is a good hike, though the best St. Croix adventures are yet to come on this ranked list.