86 Weekends We’re Booked. The Catskills Still Have Weekdays. 🍁
3-minute read
Kaaterskill Falls
The leaves don't know it's Tuesday. Lucky you.
Our weekends are spoken for, and Belleayre's Fall Festival is pulling the autumn crowd up the mountain. We love the noise. But if your calendar has any give in it, here's the invitation: come midweek, when the Catskills are exactly as beautiful and roughly half as populated. No line at the overlook. No one in the back of your photo. Just mountains, doing their best work of the year.
Foliage Deserves More Than a Drive-By
The mid and upper Catskills are around the midpoint of color change, and climbing. Check the I LOVE NY foliage map before you set out, then build the drive around it. There's something better about seeing those layered ridges with no reason to turn around. Except lunch. Lunch remains important.
Your Three-Day Midweek Plan
Day one: arrive and exhale. Get to Highmount, drop the bags, then take a slow drive through the surrounding towns. Don't plan every hour. Fall is extremely good at providing distractions.
Stay cozy at the fireplace.
Day two: Kaaterskill Falls. From the Laurel House Road parking area it's about 0.3 miles to the observation platform, on a gentle grade of roughly 7 percent. If you want more, another 0.7 miles takes you down to the base, and it's a real descent, so wear actual shoes. Go early, park only in the designated DEC lots, and stay on the marked trails and behind the railings. People get hurt here every year trying for a better angle. The platform view is already the better angle. Your camera roll is about to become trees and water. We get it…..the scenery is breathtaking
Day three: slow breakfast, one more view, something on tap. The local brewery scene makes a good afternoon anchor, though hours shift this time of year, so check before you drive. Woodstock Brewing posts theirs online. Sort out your designated driver before you sort out your flight of beer.
A Wednesday-to-Friday stay gets you the waterfall, the drive and a taproom stop without competing with a single weekend reservation.
If You Want the Festivals Too
Brews & Views runs alongside the Belleayre Fall Festival on October 10 and 11, with craft beer, cider, food and the mountain as a backdrop.
Hunter Mountain's Colors in the Catskills brings Oktoberfest energy, Bavarian food and live entertainment. Check the regional events calendar for dates.
Both are weekend events, so treat them as a bookend to your weekday stay. Arrive Wednesday, stay through Saturday, and you get the quiet half and the loud half in one trip.
Make the Next One a Weekday
You don't need a Saturday for a proper Catskills fall getaway. You need a few open days, your best sweater, and someone patient enough to stop for one more picture.
Check midweek dates and book direct →
The weekends are taken. Give yourself a weekday worth talking about, before the leaves beat you to it.
Daniel & The Crew
Alpine Four Season Lodge
32 Galli Curci Road, Highmount, NY 12441
