Two Ways Onto the Palisades From Englewood Cliffs Are Closed. One Isn't.

If your usual move on a clear Saturday is to cut down toward Dyckman Hill Road and drop into the park, you already know something is wrong. The gate has been shut since Hurricane Ida tore through the river corridor, and it hasn't reopened. If your backup plan was the Shore Trail toward Giant Stairs, that one's out too, closed since a rockslide the Palisades Interstate Park flagged on January 9, 2026. Between the two, the low route into the park that most Englewood Cliffs residents default to without thinking about it has been effectively unreachable for most of this year.

That's not a small inconvenience. It's a pattern worth understanding, because the reason both of those access points failed at the same time isn't bad luck. It's geography. And once you see why the river-level system keeps breaking, the fix becomes obvious: the cliff-top network a few minutes north, anchored at State Line Lookout in Alpine, was never vulnerable to either problem in the first place.

What's Actually Closed Right Now

Three separate points along the Englewood Cliffs stretch of the park have been out of commission, and they didn't fail for the same reason.

Dyckman Hill Road, the borough's own entrance into the park, has remained closed to vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians since damage from Hurricane Ida, according to the Palisades Parks Conservancy's current advisory list. There's no posted timeline for reopening.

Henry Hudson Drive, the river-grade road that runs south from Englewood Cliffs toward the Undercliff Picnic Area, has been closed between Englewood Circle and Undercliff since an advisory updated October 3, 2025. The conservancy is soliciting donations to fund the repair work, which tells you it's not a quick fix.

The Giant Stairs section of the Shore Trail, the signature scramble near State Line Lookout that most hikers use to get down to the river's edge, has been closed since a major rockfall in early January 2026. The park's alert noted the slope remains at risk of additional rockfall, which is why the closure has held into late summer with no reopening date announced.

Put those three together and what you get isn't three unrelated maintenance items. It's the entire low-elevation, river-adjacent trail and road system near Englewood Cliffs sitting closed at once.

Why the Low Trail Keeps Failing

The Palisades cliffs rise as much as 520 feet above the Hudson at their highest point, and the river-level trails and roads run directly along the base of that rock face. That's exactly the terrain where slides happen. It's also the terrain most exposed to flooding and washout when a storm the size of Ida moves through. Two different failure modes, same stretch of ground.

The cliff-top network doesn't share that exposure. The main trail north of State Line Lookout runs along the top of the Palisades, well back from the base of the cliff and well above the river-flood line. Part of the route even follows a paved section that was originally built in 1926 as a New Jersey state highway, later folded into what became Route 9W, and abandoned once the Palisades Interstate Parkway was constructed in the 1950s. The surface has held up for a century. It was engineered for cars, which means it was never going to wash out the way a river-grade access road can.

That's the actual mechanism behind why your two usual routes failed together while the alternative sat untouched. It's not that the park has been unlucky twice in one year. It's that the low route and the high route are built on fundamentally different terrain with fundamentally different failure risks, and this year both of the low route's weaknesses showed up at once.

The Loop That's Still Open

State Line Lookout sits just north of Englewood Cliffs in Alpine, reachable from its own unnumbered exit off the Palisades Interstate Parkway northbound, about two miles north of Exit 2. The lookout itself has been anchored since 1937 by the Lookout Inn, a WPA-built structure that still runs as a café and gift shop, open roughly 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days of the year. Parking is metered on weekends at $2.50 an hour, with the first hour free, which is a modest price for the only fully functional entry point into this stretch of the park right now.

From the parking lot, a marked route follows the Long Path north for a 2.2-mile loop that stays on top of the cliffs rather than descending toward the river, which is precisely what makes it immune to the closures affecting the lower trails. Along the way it crosses sections designated as ski trails, open to hikers year-round even outside snow season, and climbs roughly 200 vertical feet in total across two stretches of stone steps. The steepest push leads to High Gutter Point, a clifftop overlook with a clear view up and down the river toward the Tappan Zee Bridge and Hook Mountain, the northernmost point on the Palisades. The whole loop takes about an hour and a half, and dogs are permitted on leash.

The route also passes a historic marker most hikers walk right past. The state line monument, set along the Long Path near the border between New Jersey and New York, marks the actual boundary the lookout is named for. Nearby, the trail network has been formally recognized by the Palisades Interstate Park for its connection to Skunk Hollow, a Freedmen's Colony that occupied this section of the cliffs in the 1800s. The park has been working to document that history through trail signage rather than tucking it into a visitor center display, which means it's genuinely visible if you're walking the loop rather than driving past it.

What This Means If You're Planning a Weekend Right Now

If you've been putting off a Palisades hike this year because your usual entrance is gone, the fix isn't waiting for Dyckman Hill Road or Giant Stairs to reopen. It's driving the extra few minutes north to State Line Lookout and picking up the loop from there instead. You get a clifftop trail immune to both of this year's failure points, a functioning café at the trailhead, and a shorter, less strenuous hike than the Giant Stairs scramble ever was, with the added benefit of a view from High Gutter Point that most Giant Stairs hikers never see because that trail stays low along the river.

Fall is also the right season to make the switch. The cliff-top position of the Long Path loop puts you above the tree line for stretches, which means better foliage sightlines than the enclosed lower trails offer even in a normal year. With Giant Stairs closed, this is likely to be the busier of the two routes into the park this fall regardless, so an early start on weekend mornings will still matter for parking.

None of the three closures affecting the lower system have posted reopening dates, so check the Palisades Interstate Park's advisory page before you head out, especially if Henry Hudson Drive or Dyckman Hill Road factor into your route. The State Line Lookout page has current café hours and trail conditions for the loop itself.

If you live in Englewood Cliffs, you already know this stretch of the Palisades better than most search results ever will. Consider this the update your usual Saturday route has been missing.

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