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| A Castkill Attraction! |
On a day off, we decided to trek about under two hours to the Catskills and check out Kaaterskill Falls. A few of my friends had posted pictures of these falls on Instagram and since we are so close to the Catskills, we should go check it out. We traveled north and got there relatively early (plus it was early spring, so the summer tourists' season was not quite upon us. Getting there is kinda tricky as you have to park on this pull off on the road going up the mountain, they hike along the windy mountain highway to the trailhead. The website stated that the trail was a STRENUOUS quick hike to the falls. Knowing Marc and I who have hiked STRENUOUS trails everywhere, we anticipated a hard hike. But to our hiking level, this hike was NOTHING TO US. We got there, unphased by the hike, and the sight was a beautiful site.
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| Side Profile of Bastion Falls |
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| Bastion Falls |
Kaaterskill Falls is the tallest two-tiered waterfall in New York. The strenuous, but not so strenuous trail for us was about 2.0 miles. There is a set of waterfalls that you see when you first get to the trailhead. Do not be fooled, this is NOT Kaaterskill Falls, this is Bastion Falls. Very great primary falls to see on this hike!
As you continue on the terrain, you hike up and down uneven rooted trails, a series of wooden stairs, and more rooted trails until you get to the double-decker falls!
The Kaaterskill Falls are 260-feet of water falling action. You can check out the lower falls and pool from the large boulders. There is a non-official social trail that can get you from the bottom tier to the second tier. However, it is eroded and really dangerous. So we just admired from the bottom.
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| Some old hash tags! Haha |
After taking lots of photos and snacking on the large boulders at the base, we discovered you could travel up more up the mountain and park at this parking lot at the end of a backroad to get to a viewing platform of the upper falls. So we got into the car and decided to check it out too! It was really cool. The trail to the platform was definitely new and renovated and it was super cool to check out. There was also a trail that traveled to the mouth of the upper falls. This was really neat because there were many stone engavings of people from as early as the 1920s and 30s!
It was a pretty cool day trip up in the Catskills! I definitely recommend going to check out. I also heard that you can swim/wade in the pools, but I hear it is definitely a tourist attraction and gets pretty crowded come summer.
TheChristyBel
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| From the viewing platform! |
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| Upper Falls |
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Kaaterskill Falls
1,946 ft above sea level |
This morning Marc and I travelled back to Kaaterskill Falls. It is sooooo different from when we went back in April. Bastion Falls (the falls at the base of the trailhead and off the road) was completely dried up with no pool and the two tiers were barely trickling. Below are some pics from back in April to now. It's really amazing and very scary to see how much can change when we have not gotten a lot of rain and had very little snow from the winter to create enough snowmelt for the falls to feed and flourish. Very scary! I really hope that since this winter is not an El Nino year, we get a snowier winter and that we can get enough precip to get these falls flowing again.
