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closeIt might be a hot summer day, but the air is a pleasant few degrees cooler in the gorges of Ricketts Glen State Park. Here dappled sunlight filters through leaves of giant hemlocks and oaks, offering a visual counterpoint to the gurgle and splash of flowing water.
CDT/Nabil K. Mark
The B. Reynolds 40' waterfall along the Glen Leigh trail. Ricketts Glen State Park is located in Benton, Pa., and is home to 22 named waterfalls. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
If you enjoy waterfalls — the soothing music of running water, the moist air that draws out aroma of moss and earth — Ricketts Glen is not to be missed.
Covering 13,500 acres in north-central Pennsylvania, the park is best known as home of 22 named waterfalls, ranging in height from 11 to 94 feet. Most of the falls are in Ganoga Glen and Glen Leigh gorges, in the Glens Natural Area. The two branches of Kitchen Creek flow through these gorges and merge at Waters Meet, then flow through Ricketts Glen.
The park has 26 miles of hiking trails of varying lengths and difficulty levels. The most popular is also the most difficult — the 7.2-mile Falls Trail. The January issue of Backpacker magazine named it a readers’ choice for the best hike in Pennsylvania.
If you don’t feel ready to hike that distance, there’s a 3.2-mile loop that will take you down through one glen and up the other. The trail, which closely follows the edge of the creek, will allow you to see most of the park’s falls.
Both hikes are rated as “very difficult.” That means, park Manager Terence Daltroff said, that people making the hike should be in reasonably good physical shape, wear boots or footwear suitable for traversing rough terrain, and use good “trail sense.”
Hikers should understand, Daltroff said, that the trail is quite steep in places — the elevation changes by 1,000 feet as you climb up or down the trail. And because it closely follows the streams, the trail can be quite thin and slippery in places.
Good “trail sense,” Daltroff says, means staying away from trail edges that could crumble, not taking shortcuts, and heeding any posted warnings or trail closings. That being said, you don’t have to be a rock climber or an athlete to tackle the trail. On any summer day, dozens, even hundreds, of people ranging from children to senior citizens climb down one gorge and up the other.
Other trails in the park range from easy to moderate in difficulty. A short hike of just one-half mile, the Evergreen Trail is considered easy and gives a view of the last series of four falls.
The waterfalls are not the only attraction at Ricketts Glen. Those giant hemlocks, pines and oaks branching overhead are as much a wonder as the cascading waters. Many of the trees are more than 500 years old; ring counts on fallen trees have revealed ages of up to 900 years, according to the park Web site.
Ricketts Glen is also popular with birders, being home to a wide range of birds, including bald eagles. It’s part of the Audubon Susquehanna River Birding and Wildlife trail, a series of trails across Pennsylvania connecting some of the state’s best sites for viewing birds and wildlife.
The park’s 245-acre Lake Jean offers opportunities for fishing, boating and swimming, as well as camping.
The beach is open this summer, but major rehabilitation work has closed the Lake Jean beach house and food concession areas, beach parking lot No. 1, the restrooms at the Lake Jean day use area, and the group tent-camping area until late in the summer.
Also closed by construction is the Lake Rose parking lot, which is being expanded. That eliminates one access point to Falls Trail. The trail, however, can still be accessed from a second beach parking lot and from lots along state Route 118.
If you do want to camp in the park, it’s best to plan ahead. The park’s rustic tent and trailer camp sites fill quickly on nice summer weekends, Daltroff said. The 10 cabins in the park can be reserved 11 months in advance — and are usually snatched up as soon as they’re available.
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