Josh G.
Yelp
Kaaterskill Falls
Okay, let's be real for a second. You can't review nature. That's just ridiculous. "I didn't like how there wasn't a lot of water coming down and the rocks were slippery due to condensation and there wasn't enough shade from the sun and blah blah blah." Hopefully, you're not someone who did this with something naturally found in the world. For me, yeah I'm reviewing Kaaterskill Falls, but I'm gonna try to do this from a manmade angle.
How so? Well around the Falls is where you'll get a lot of the actual features that were additions to the wooded area (and viable for reviewing). Let's start with the two trails you can take to enter and find Kaaterskill, though I want my review to truly help others in ensuring they aren't squashed by an 18-wheeler semi trailer truck. The trailhead along Route 23A is a great place to start with Bastion Falls as a breathtaking marker, but there's no safe way to get there. A five-minute walk away is the tiniest of parking lots right on the side of this windy road. If you can snag a spot, you'll then have to walk those five minutes on treacherous turns with basically no shoulder or path to walk on as cars can come zooming around curves and corners. Sound fun? It's not, but luckily, I was only a driver and never a hiker in this area. That's because THERE IS A MUCH SAFER WAY TO GO!
I'm not sure why it isn't more publicized (most of my research brought me to that scary little lot), but if you take the upper trailhead to Laurel House Road, you'll come to an actual parking lot that's not on a bustling street with much easier access to the woods and Falls. Yeah, some of the excitement is taken out of it all by starting at the top and not working your way through from the Route 23A entrance, but c'mon people, it just makes sense to go in from here. You'll still get to see everything and you won't fear for your life (though you'll have a nice hike back up to finish off the day).
From that upper trailhead, there are paved paths that lead to a few different trails as well as the viewing platform for Kaaterskill Falls. It's a nice thing to check out, even if you're farther from the Falls, just to get a glimpse of it from a higher vantage point and a pretty decent shot of the mountainous horizon. Once done, you can head over the manmade bridge and down the trail to the lower part of the Falls. This path is still through the woods with some angled spots that look over a steep-ish hill of trees, but most of it has been curated via construction to create an easier walk to this natural beauty. The large steps that lead down to the bottom of the Falls just make things safer when wanting to gaze up at its glory.
There's also a path (with rope barricade) that leads you to the higher platform and where you'll really get your Kaaterskill experience as you could walk right up to the falling water, if you wanted. We came pretty close to it, but the mist coming off was nice enough to cool us down from our hike. Here's where you can also easily become a pancake if you head too close to the edge of the rocks to look down at the rest of the Falls. Heed those warning signs! I promise, you can still get a good Instagram pic even from a safe distance. And I'm not gonna tell you everything we did was 100% kosher. There is a small pathway you can take to get up and go around the back of the Falls. It's totally not meant to be done (the State didn't create this part), but people were doing it and we felt we could handle the slight adventure. Just be careful of the slippery rocks.
Overall, I did my best here in not reviewing nature. Yeah, that last paragraph talks about Kaaterskill Falls itself, but the real review is just everything around the area that's been created and added by New York's Department of Environmental Conservation. They've done a solid job in making things safer (though that lower trailhead needs a path for people) and generating a great hiking experience for your novice nature lover. So if you come to Kaaterskill, yeah maybe the jet of water isn't as strong as you'd like or there are a lot of bugs or the ground is muddy, but hey, give Mother Nature a break and don't review her.