Olana: Site for All Seasons

Olana has become an essential “go to” location in our personal hiking portfolio. It is easily accessible, just off the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, and offers a range of hiking options from easy to moderately challenging. While the site itself is quite popular, you can find isolated trails that provide a semblance of solitude.

The Olana home is extraordinary, but access normally is via a tour that charges admission (the grounds are a NY State Park, and always free). Adults are currently $20 (Feb ’23), but children under 12 are free. Tour capacity is limited and sells out on prime weekends and holidays. You can purchase your tickets in advance on the Olana website.

The home is exceptionally preserved, and much of Frederic Church’s personal furniture and art collection remains on display. We became members of the non-profit that operates the home and allows unlimited, free tour admissions for up to 4 persons at a time, making Olana an essential stop whenever out-of-town friends come to visit us. My wife has completed the interior tour 4 or 5 times and remains enthusiastic because each tour guide brings a different perspective. Special events sometimes offer free tour admissions to the community. If you join the Olana Partnership’s email list, you’ll get notification of them.

Hiking Options

Most of the hiking within the park is along “carriage roads”. These are reasonably wide, hard-packed gravel tracks originally designed to allow carriages or farm carts access throughout the property. Footing is easy, they drain well, and snow melts quickly . The roads were carefully laid out with switchbacks to enable horses to climb to the top while pulling their loads. From Rt 23 to the Olana home-site along the “North Road”, elevation increases by about 250 vertical feet along 4,500 linear feet of road: an average gradient of about 5.5%. That’s noticeable, challenging if you’re not used to it, but still reasonably moderate.

Access via the “Ridge Road” extension from 9G is slightly steeper, but still well-graded. In addition, from the south end of Ridge Road, you can walk down about 100 vertical feet to the lake, then up again by 150 vertical feet to the summit of “Crown Hill”.

If you’re reasonably fit you can walk much of the trail system in a couple of hours. You can cumulatively climb about 600 vertical feet if you walk up and down all three of the hilly carriage roads (Ridge Road extension, North Road, and Crown Hill Road). Each offers rewarding vistas of the surrounding countryside: the Hudson River and the main Catskill escarpment to the West, the Gunks to the SW, the Berkshires to the NE, and the Taconics to the SE. If you can, pick a clear sunny day. And during leaf season, the views are even more extraordinary.

Suggestions

If you’re a beginner, and unsure of your fitness level, park near the home site and walk to the house, then along the upper section of Ridge Road. Completing this loop will give you some of the best vistas in the park with only modest elevation changes. If you want more challenge, you can walk part way down the Ridge Road extension towards 9G, as far as you’re comfortable, keeping in mind that you’ll need to walk back up to return to your car.

If you’re moderately fit, you could do the same walk, then cut across the mowed meadow path and hike to the top of Crown Hill. You can return directly across the meadow, or (for even more challenge) extend the walk past Cozy Cottage and part way up the North Road back to the house.

If you’re confident of your fitness (or want a workout) start at the bottom and walk up the hill from either 9G or 23 via the Ridge Road extension or the North Road (respectively). Then explore as much as you have time for. There’s plenty of parking off the traffic circle where 9G intersects 23 at the eastern edge of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. However, it’s equally inconvenient to either of the two trails up. On 9G, there’s a little parking area by the historic marker commemorating the establishment of Columbia County. This is convenient to the Ridge Road Extension entrance, just a couple of hundred feet north. Alternatively, where North Road intersects 23, there’s parking for two or three cars next to the gate, though these are often taken.

However you do it, you should enjoy a glorious walk!