Watkins Glen Park is by far one of the most beautiful places in NY. Its narrow 400-feet high gorge is beautifully carved by a creek and a few waterfalls.
In winter though, the most beautiful gorge trail is closed, so to be able to see all the magical beauty of the frozen park you have two options:
- Walk the Indian trail and see the winter gorge from above. This is a nice hike but you won’t see much
- Send your drone down from one of the two open observation points which is what we did acknowledging the risk that we may lose the drone in a deep narrow gorge forever.
- Jump over the fence and face the possible consequences. Which I don’t recommend doing but we did this once anyway.
Here’s our drone footage of the place (yup, almost lost our cute little bot-pet there!)
To give you an idea of what the Indian trail hike looks like, here’s our photo on it:
As you can see, it’s very nice but probably isn’t worth taking a 4-hour road trip to the place (which we had done).
Obviously we were hesitant to go to the closed trail, so we only did a short part of it, the one that took us to the first waterfall, Cavern Cascade.
The waterfall was almost completely frozen and it looked truly magical!
As you can see, it is pretty clear why the trail is closed: There’s ice everywhere! Unless I had had my spikes on, I wouldn’t have been able to make even a couple of steps without falling.
Watkins Glen State Park is true winter wonderland: Glittering ice everywhere!
Overall, the park has 4 main waterfalls which look beautiful all year around. Unfortunately none of them is visible in winter.
The history of the place is also really interesting. It used to be a privately owned resort and before that it has been populated by Seneca tribe.
If you are in the area, make sure to check it out. In fact the main entrance is beautiful and offers plenty of cool views from its observation points.
There’s a lot to see around the main entrance including picturesque ice cascades:
If you are in the area, definitely stop by! I am not if I’d drive here just to see the main entrance and walk the Indian trail but I’d definitely stop by to take some pictures if I am nearby!
If you did go all the way, check out all of the nice places nearby:
Thk u sooooo much: following your directions… so grateful 🙏