This state park was thirty minutes away from my friend Emily’s college house. I drove through it on the way there and wanted to go really bad. Emily, Michaela and I planned to hike the falls trail and we thought we would be going about seven miles. Instead we only ended up hiking three miles because we only did the loop part of the trail that went by all the water falls and not the rest of it, the last three waterfalls at the end of the Y were closed. Everything we read online said it was a seven mile hike but looking at the sign and our own tracked mileage it’s about 3-4.
Map of our hike.
Elevation and distance stats of our hike thanks to Emily’s Garmin watch. As it shows the first half of the loop beginning at Mohawk Falls is a downhill hike and then you start going back uphill at the turn around point. We all said we would rate this hike as difficult due to the terrain but it wasn’t hard on our bodies. There were just tons of slick, wet, steep steps and rocks. I would definitely not recommend taking a dog on this trail I don’t know how you could walk it unless the dog were carried for some of it. We did see one dog but it was small so I assume it’s owner tried carrying it down some of the super narrow and steep parts.
The hike in to the first falls.
First view of the creek that feeds all the falls.
Mohawk Falls.
I loved the way that little streams of water dropped off the moss/rocks.
I don’t know the names of all the falls but I tired to get a picture of every one. Some of the falls had plaques with their names next to them so I know those ones, this may have been my favorite fall. I like the shorter ones that show water streams from many different levels.
This is an example of an easy part of trail that goes right beside the falls.
This is a picture of Ganoga falls from far away it was the biggest waterfall at 94 feet.
Ganoga falls from the bottom, it doesn’t look very big in this picture but in person it is very tall and lots of mist was coming off the falls which felt great.
I definitely missed pictures of some of the falls, there was SO MUCH falling water I honestly couldn’t tell if some of the water was considered a small fall or not.
The last three pictures above are from the spot we stopped to sit and have a snack, I was playing with my moms old camera she let me borrow. I was trying to take a picture of the water with a longer shutter speed to get the streaming water effect some cool waterfall pictures have but I was very unsuccessful. After “lunch” we began the hike back up in elevation because the trail was closed for the last three falls.
Reynolds falls.
Picture from behind Reynolds falls.
Carin someone built.
It doesn’t look too bad in the picture but this is an example of some of the steep steps. There were some that were plenty steeper and narrower. When we went on a Thursday morning there were barely any people there. I can’t imagine trying to make this hike with tons of people on the trail let alone to take a dog.
This cool crevasse was called midway crevasse and was located halfway down the highlands trail we took back to the parking lot. Since it was going to rain that’s all we explored of the park but if you love waterfalls this is the trail for you.
Des Hikes Thru 