Editors' picks across 8categories — the dock with the deepest channel, the winery with the view, the restaurant with the right wine list, the trail nobody's on at sunrise.
Scribner's Catskill Lodge's dining room on Scribner Hollow Road, floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ridge and a cedar deck with its own fire pit for the shoulder-season crowd. The chef trained in a three-Michelin-star kitchen in Barcelona before landing here; the menu reads New American but leans on Hudson Valley farms for the ingredients. Reserve ahead on foliage weekends — this is the table every Hunter Mountain rental books first.
Visit ↗Mediterranean cooking on Main Street — brick-oven pizza, cheese boards, a bar that pours past most Tannersville kitchens' closing time. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 5 to 9 PM, dinner only, which makes it the after-hike option rather than a lunch stop. The patio catches the last of the afternoon sun before the mountain's shadow crosses Main Street around six.
Running since 1971 in a Main Street building stacked with instruments and antiques for sale alongside the tables — order the meatloaf or the chicken pot pie, then browse a hundred imported cheeses on the way out. Live music some weekends, a beer list heavier on Belgian and English ales than the rest of the block. The place a ski-town regular takes visiting family without over-explaining it.
Visit ↗On Spruceton Road in West Kill, twenty minutes past Hunter with the Devil's Path ridgeline filling the windows — small-batch beers, ciders, and New York wines on a farmhouse property that feels considerably further from a ski resort than it actually is. Thursday through Saturday only, closed Monday through Wednesday. Worth the drive on its own, not a stop on the way to somewhere else.
Visit ↗The blue-blazed spine of this entire hiking network, starting at the North Lake day-use parking lot and running the cliff edge north toward Windham — Artist's Rock, Sunset Rock, and Newman's Ledge all sit on its first two miles. Nineteenth-century landscape painters worked this stretch before it had a trail name. Parking fills by 9 AM on a clear October Saturday; there is no overflow lot.
A bedrock outcropping about a mile up the Escarpment Trail, roughly 45 minutes from the North Lake lot, with an open view down both North and South Lakes and the Hudson Valley beyond. Thomas Cole and Frederick Church painted from this exact ledge; those canvases hang in the Met and the Wadsworth Atheneum now. Go for the last hour of daylight and expect company — this is the most-photographed spot at the lake.
A 1.7-mile loop out of the South Lake side that passes the Catskill Mountain House ruins before reaching the rock itself — a glacial erratic roughly the size of a small cabin, dropped here as the last ice sheet retreated. The ledges just past it look down 1,800 feet into Kaaterskill Clove toward Palenville, no railing. Thirty minutes to an hour round trip; the busiest single loop in the day-use area after the beaches.
A certified-organic farm on Main Street in Tannersville running its own market — shiitakes, more than 50 vegetable varieties, fruit, and the produce that shows up on the tasting menus at Prospect and Tabla. Saturdays 9 to 2 year-round, plus Wednesday afternoons from July through October. The closest thing to a farm stand this side of the mountain.
The campground's own concession — canoes, rowboats, kayaks, and stand-up paddleboards, no motors permitted on the lake at all. Roughly $15 for a rental day, which the campground defines as 9 AM to 4 PM, not 24 hours. This is how most visitors get on the water here; there's no marina, no private dock culture, none of the boat-club infrastructure you'd find on a Finger Lake.
Two tiers dropping about 260 feet total, among the tallest waterfalls in New York and the single most-painted natural feature in the Hudson River School's catalog. Parking is upper-trailhead only now — the old Route 23A lower lot is permanently barricaded after years of roadside accidents, so the approach runs via Laurel House Road off North Lake Road, roughly a mile each way. Read the insider Q&A before you go: people have died here going off-trail for photos.
The clearing where America's first grand mountain resort stood from 1823 until the state burned it in 1963, in keeping with the Forest Preserve's forever-wild rules — only the gateposts remain. Presidents and industrialists once took this exact Hudson Valley view from a hotel porch; now it's a short, flat walk from the North Lake day-use lot. Go for sunrise if you can manage the early alarm — it was the whole reason the hotel got built here.
The Scenic Skyride runs a mile-long chairlift to 3,200 feet in about 11 minutes — the longest lift ride in the Catskills, running weekends through summer and fall for hikers, mountain bikers, and anyone who wants the view without the climb. On a clear day the sightline reaches the Berkshires and the Green Mountains. Fifteen minutes from the lake by car, and the obvious rainy-morning pivot once the North-South Lake trailheads turn to mud.
Visit ↗The largest, most-reserved campground in the Catskill Forest Preserve — 219 sites across seven loops, two swimming beaches, a boat rental concession, and trailhead access to nearly everything on this page. This is not a lakefront-home market; it's public land, and the lake's entire identity runs through this one facility. Reserve sites up to nine months out on ReserveAmerica for a July or foliage weekend, or plan on the day-use fee and no guaranteed parking.