Devasego Falls

A place to discuss waterfalls. Including the parks that house them and the hikes to get to them.

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Rickhem
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I happened to read a few references to this waterfall while lurking on this board, prior to my registering. Apparently it is now normally covered by the normal pool level of the Schoharie Reservoir. It didn't specifically list the location, but I remembered someone saying that they missed the opportunity to see it back when there was work being done on the dam. Well.....while out for a motorcycle ride one day near Manorkill Falls, it became clear that the dam was being worked on again, and the water level in the reservoir was down a hundred feet or so. After exploring the chasm below Manorkill Falls that had been exposed by the receding water, we decided to see if we could find the elusive Devasego Falls. It is on DEC property, so you need to be mindful of those conditions for access, but the time to go see this is now.

Here is the view of the falls from downstream as we finally found where they are located. The picture was taken from the top edge of a dropoff of about 100 feet down to the silty streambed where water still flowed towards the dam.
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Here is a view from the eastern bank looking west. There is a significant amount of concrete structure that makes up the falls, and it's still in good enough shape to climb around on.
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Finally, here is another view looking west and showing a bit more of the downstream area on the west side. Note that there is a shipping container (tractor-trailer size box) that is buried in the silt, and has a buoy marker of some sort on it. It's just inside of the large tree branch at about 2 o'clock in the image. Also, not sure if you can zoom in on it, but there is a rope dropping down from the tree-line, down the cliff face to the area where the storage container is buried, so somebody has been exploring that. The tire in the foreground gives the illusion that the falls aren't that big, but the shipping container offers a better reference for size.
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That pool at the base of the falls looks pretty deep, and I wonder how many fish were still trapped in there. The banks of the stream left still flowing were soft and had a plethora of animal tracks. You'd occasionally see a rowboat chained to a tree....apparently in the middle of nowhere, but then we realized that the boat probably was very close to what normal pool level was when the reservoir was full. Another thing I found interesting is that internet searches for images of the Devasego Falls turned up a lot of old postcards, and the pictures looked almost identical to how the exposed falls appear today.

If you have a chance to go, now is the time to see something that might not be view-able for a long long time after the reservoir fills again.
L_G_D
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Very interesting, and nice shots! The post you saw was probably one I made a while ago, nice to see some shots of these, I might try to get over there the next couple weekends and check them out.
LGD
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