Son, dog and husband all joined me this weekend to a jaunt to Poestinkill, NY, to the Barberville Falls of Rensselaer Plateau. My son has almost, but not quite figured out that waterfalls involve hills, because you need hills to make the water fall down. Don’t tell him. Also don’t tell him that we did two trails, not one.
The waterfall trail was recently improved with stairs and a seating area, but there are bits of the longer ridge trail where it feels like you are wandering aimlessly through the forest. The trail area is tucked between private land, so do make sure you find the trail markers before you end up in someone’s back yard. We went around the long loop, which had many places that I think are rivulets in the wet season. There were also deep tracks and gullies sitting dry and empty, to the point that we worried that there was no waterfall at all. Hot, tired, afraid of tumbling down hill (especially with an impatient dog whose method of going down stairs is to race down, relying on his hind legs to catch himself) we reached the bottom of the short waterfall trail, to be rewarded by the sound of rushing water. It’s probably overwhelming in the wet season, but even now it was beautiful, with water murmuring down a rock like a giant installation from a fancy restaurant. There was a secondary waterfall on one side, marred by signs warning not to climb it.
They have installed benches to sit and enjoy the falls on a wooden platform (and rest before going back up the steep incline).
