Niquette Bay State Park — Attraction in Colchester

This quickly accessible year round day use park is a great choice for hikers. Located just about 30 minutes from the VT big city, it offers lots of space and trails to get out for some fresh clean covid free air!

The network of trails offer varying degrees of difficulty and lengths. Dogs are welcome and should be leashed. They can even swim at Calm Cove!

There is another smaller beach with water access, but it is a bit marshy.

The Bypass trail is a neat walk along vertical wooden stairs with some peekaboo views of the lake, leading to Calm Cove. The cove has a little space on the rocks and beach to enjoy the quiet view and eat a snack.

Please socially distance.

Be safe and wear...

We really wanted to like this hike. It seems ideal from the pictures and description. We were not impressed. We were there late July. We were under seige from the hungry mosquitos the whole time. Our natural stuff didn't work very well. There were quite a few areas where you had to walk though a lot of thick mud. They had some very nice stairs for the steep climbs. It seems the muddy areas could use some trail maintenance. The trails were very rooty and rocky, so those with poor coordination should bring walking sticks or avoid this hike all together. Ledges was especially technical. The sandy beach was very nice and the dog swim area was a rock ledge which looked fun...

Pretty solid mix of easy to moderate trails, connecting beaches, lookouts on Malletts Bay’s inner and outer bays, a dog swimming area, etc. Some of the steeper sections provide for a good workout and descending those same sections is a bit more challenging on packed snowy/icy trails in the winter.

Close to town - 89 or route 7, and a good year round option for a relatively quick hike or afternoon if you want to hit all of the trails. Usually pretty low traffic, too, if your looking for...