Kaaterskill Falls, Viewing Platform — Attraction in Town of Hunter

This was my first time in the Catskills and I was amazed with how beautiful the area is. Kaaterskill Falls was a highlight of our visit.

We started from the trailhead at Rt 23A and hiked up to the falls. The parking area can be busy and you walk along the road to get from the lot to the trail. Cars tend to slow down due to the sharp curves but still, be aware you are walking in the road with a rock wall on one side and active traffic on the other.

Once you get off the road the fun begins. The trail is a little challenging as it is uphill from Rt 28A to the falls. In fact, there are warning signs alerting hikers to the danger of the area. Hiking poles might actually be advised in this terrain. What I enjoyed about approaching the falls from this point, as opposed to beginning at the top, is that the falls slowly reveal themselves to you in a nice dramatic fashion. Be sure to stand at the base of the falls and feel the mist surrounding you.

Remember to stay on the trail and heed the warning signs. There is a stairway up to the viewing platform at the top of the falls. It is another steep hike but is worth the view. On fair weather fall weekends, expect a lot of foot traffic in this area.

All in all though, this is a pretty spectacular...

Visiting this age-old tourist attraction was a real treat – not least because it was so hard to get there! First you have to get to the trailhead which is nearly half a mile from the parking spot on the 23A; down an alarmingly busy and bendy stretch of road. For a few hundred feet, there’s a storm drain ditch to the left of the road where you can walk (as long as it’s dry of course). Once you get to the trailhead the fun really begins. There's a well signposted scramble up the Caterskill Creek and, after about 20 minutes, you're rewarded with your first sight of the double falls. The entire height of the cascade is bigger that Niagara Falls (although a lot less wide), and this waterfall used to be a major tourist attraction in the 1800s. It was fairly busy when we went in late summer 2019 but there weren't many people painting it, which was all the craze a couple of hundred years ago. As a modern day traveller, you can hike up through the valley all the way to the top, to a high up viewing platform, but we just went to the halfway point of the two-stage falls and...

This park was absolutely stunning. They had great hiking trails and not to mention the views! My group and I started at the top of the mountain and worked our way down. We spent sometime at the top of the fall, there are pools you can relax in up at the top, not to mention the bounty of names carved into the rock for over a century. The views from the top were stunning. Next we worked our way down the mountain on the trail n went to the second portion of the falls. Watching the water fall for over two hundred feet was absolutely breathtaking. There is also some pools you can relax in to on this level too. Last but not least we worked our way down to the bottom and just sat and looked up in amazement at the beauty of the entire fall. After that we hiked backed up to the top and stopped at the side view of the fall, I definitely recommend seeing this amazing fall as many ways as you can. As it goes for parking there are multiple places to park and start your hike. Just follow the trails from there....