4.4 miles | 764 ft gain | Difficulty: Moderate | Rating ★★★★

When I see hikes ranked difficult, it usually means one of two things. It’s often way harder than I expect, or sometimes, way easier. Of course, there’s a different in difficulty depending where you are. Mount Beacon hard isn’t quite the same as Plateau Mountain hard. The Giant Stairs was rated hard and with a rock scramble along the shoreline, I was a bit hesitant. However, end ended up being much easier than expected. Long, but straight forward.

Just north of the George Washington Bridge starts the Palisades Interstate Park, spanning New Jersey and New York. It’s a great park just outside the city with plenty of accessible trails along the cliffs and shoreline. The adventure becomes a bit more difficult when you combine the upper and lower trails into loops with steep rock or switchback trails connecting the two. Probably its most famous trail is the Long Path, which starts on the NYC side of the GW Bridge and travels 300+ miles north to Albany.

We started at the State Line Lookout that was surprisingly full at 10:30am. While I’ve only hiked in the Palisades a few times, I’m usually me with big lots and ample parking spots. Not so much the case here, but perhaps it was because of the no-effort dual state views just 100 feet away.

We entered the woods at the northwest corner of the lot, following the long path and trail A. We traveled on the wide easy trail, crossing the lookout access road, then dropping quickly via stone steps. The steep stone steps occasionally gave way to narrow forest trails as we made our way down to the Shore trail. We saw the caution signs warning of the Giant Stairs and 2 hour scramble ahead of us (we did it in about an hour 15).

The first part was probably the most difficult as we rose 100 feet above the shore over large boulders. Occasionally we’d get a forest path to rest, but often even the forest trails involved large stones and careful footing.

We crossed three separate exposed talus fields, unwooded and dropping straight to the river. I kept my eyes straight ahead during those parts, trying to ignore the wide drops below us. Each of these sections got a little easier, but still made challenging by the high traffic and looking for safe footing as people tried to pass in both directions.

The last open section was my favorite, where we boulder hopped right along the river’s edge with waves lapping up against us. Once past the stairs, we stopped briefly to admire the Peanut Leap Cascade and Italian garden ruins. The falls were okay, though we have been a bit spoiled with waterfalls this year.

From here we climbed steeply on rough wooden stairs and switchbacks, eventually making our way back to the Long Path with great views of New York and the Hudson the full way until we made it back to our car.