Ricketts Glen: The Falls Trail

The essential welcome and SAFETY briefing at the Route 118 trailhead: sturdy boots, stay on the trail, back from the edges, wet slick rock, do not climb the falls or enter the water — this is DCNR's 'most difficult' t…

The gentlest walking of the day: a creekside warm-up under eastern hemlock, and the tiny insect threatening these trees.

Boone's opening tale: Colonel R.B. Ricketts, the lumber baron who bought this whole mountain to log it — and walked into the glen and couldn't bring himself to fell a single tree.

Michigan deer, a returned forest hunter, and what to do if you meet a black bear or a timber rattlesnake on the trail.

For more than a decade the family on top of this mountain had no idea what was hiding at the bottom of the hill.

The first two waterfalls on the lower Kitchen Creek — Murray Reynolds and Sheldon Reynolds — named for Colonel Ricketts's wife's family, and the shape of the hike ahead.

Harrison Wright Falls — one of the most photographed falls in the glen, a near-perfect broad curtain — with a caution about the wet rock and the pool.

Waters Meet, where Ganoga Glen (west) and Glen Leigh (east) join to form Kitchen Creek — the hub of the loop, and the plan: up Ganoga Glen first, across the top, down Glen Leigh.

He owned eighty thousand acres and could barely pay his bills, and then he decided to go into the electric business.

Two forty-seven-foot falls at the foot of Ganoga Glen, and the place where this trail stops forgiving mistakes.

Boone's tale of the men who actually built the trail — Matt Hirlinger and five others who spent four years, 1889 to 1893, hand-cutting the stone steps into the cliffs beside the falls.

Climbing the western branch past Conestoga, Mohican, Delaware, Seneca and Cayuga falls — and the two shapes of waterfall you'll see, the stepped 'wedding cake' and the sheer 'bridal veil'.

Ganoga Falls, 94 feet, the tallest waterfall in the park and the centerpiece of the hike — the meaning of its name, and a firm caution to view it from the trail and never climb on or near it.

Boone's tale of Ricketts the soldier — the artillery officer whose guns were fought over hand-to-hand at Gettysburg, and who spent his last quiet decades building trails in this glen.

The upper end of Ganoga Glen past Oneida and Mohawk falls — how the falls formed: hard Huntley Mountain caprock over soft Catskill shale, the Allegheny Front, and the Ice-Age flood that carved them.

The junction at the top of Ganoga Glen: bear right onto the Highland Trail, heading east across the plateau.

Eight hundred people, a railroad, a school and a church, all built to cut one mountain. By 1914, five families were left.

In the 1870s, students climbed this plateau for summer school, taught in part by the future father of Pennsylvania forestry.

The gentle Highland Trail across the plateau linking the two glens — the old-growth forest of the Glens Natural Area (a National Natural Landmark), 500-year-old hemlocks, and Lake Jean nearby.

Boone's tale on the plateau — the ancient old-growth forest of the Glens Natural Area, trees five hundred and even nine hundred years old, and what they've lived through.

The signed junction at the end of the Highland Trail: a hard right, downhill, into the steep eastern canyon.

The head of Glen Leigh at Onondaga Falls, starting the steeper, more rugged eastern descent — with a strong caution about descending wet stone steps.

Boone's tale of the waterfall names — the nations Ricketts honored on the falls, and the meaning said to lie behind 'Ganoga': water on the mountain.

The dramatic middle of Glen Leigh — Huron, Shawnee, and tall Ozone Falls — with a sober, respectful reminder of a fatal fall here and why staying on the trail matters.

R.B. Ricketts and F.L. Ricketts falls and the lower Glen Leigh drops — the man who named them all, and how nearly every fall carries the name of a Native nation.

Boone's quiet, respectful safety tale — the wet stone of this glen has taken lives, including hikers who died trying to save a friend from the water; the deepest respect for the glen is boots, the trail, and distance…

The final falls of Glen Leigh — Wyandot, Erie, and Tuscarora — a last, serious safety word (a fatal fall happened at Tuscarora), the return to Waters Meet, and the farewell with a request for a review.

A little over a mile and a half back along Kitchen Creek: easy on the knees, and every falls looks new from above.

In 1935 these falls were approved to become federal land. Ask why it never happened and you'll get three different answers.

The rangers' farewell, plus one last gift if your legs have anything left: Adams Falls and a hemlock older than Columbus.