The Overlook Inside Englewood Cliffs That the Park's Own Closures Can't Touch

"Several months, and possibly until spring."

That's how a New Jersey-side park superintendent described the timeline for reopening the Giant Stairs, the rock scramble that most Englewood Cliffs hikers use to reach the river's edge from State Line Lookout. He said it in mid-January, right after a slide closed the trail. Spring has come and gone. As of this fall, the Giant Stairs is still closed, and it isn't the only way down that's shut.

If you live in Englewood Cliffs and the Palisades has felt harder to get into this year, that's not a feeling. Three separate access points are closed for three unrelated reasons, and one of them is the borough's own park entrance.

Three closures, three different years

The park's current advisories list three access points affecting the stretch closest to Englewood Cliffs, and none of them share a cause.

The Palisades Parks Conservancy has posted a two-phase plan addressing the first two: stabilize and reopen Dyckman Hill Road first, then move on to a broader restoration of Henry Hudson Drive between Edgewater and Alpine, with drainage improvements and repairs to the eastern parapet walls. That's real progress compared to earlier this year, when neither closure had a plan attached. But a plan isn't a date. No construction start has been confirmed for either phase.

The Giant Stairs closure is a separate problem entirely. The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference flagged it the day it happened, describing a rockfall and landslide that made the terrain unsafe for further use. Park officials said at the time that a full winter might need to pass before the slope could be safely reassessed. It has, and the trail remains closed with no reopening date posted.

Why this one hits closer to home than the usual trail alert

Trail closures happen every year across the Palisades system. What makes this year different for Englewood Cliffs specifically is that Dyckman Hill Road isn't just any access point. It's the borough's own named entrance into the park, the spot most residents default to without thinking about it on a clear Saturday. When that closes at the same time as the river-grade road running south from it and the rock scramble most people used as the backup, the entire low-level system that Englewood Cliffs treats as its own has been out of service for a stretch that now spans multiple seasons.

None of this touches the cliff-top network above it.

What the closures didn't reach

The Long Path, the clifftop trail that runs the length of the park, sits well above the river-grade system that's been closed. It's accessible from State Line Lookout, a short drive north on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, and it was never part of the storm damage or the rockslide. If your routine has been on pause because the low route is gone, the cliff-top loop from State Line Lookout has been open the whole time.

There's a closer option that doesn't require leaving the borough at all. Rockefeller Lookout sits along the Palisades Interstate Parkway inside Englewood Cliffs, offering a clifftop view of the Hudson River and the Manhattan skyline without any descent toward the river-grade trails that have been affected. It was never part of the system that failed, because it isn't part of that system. It's a pull-off, not a trailhead, which means the storm damage to Henry Hudson Drive and the rockfall near Giant Stairs are simply irrelevant to it.

Further north, Greenbrook Sanctuary, a 165-acre woodland preserve on top of the Palisades in Tenafly and Alpine, offers another clifftop option that sidesteps the closed section entirely.

Fall is the season to make the switch anyway

The cliff-top position of the Long Path loop puts you above the tree line for long stretches, which means clearer sightlines on the foliage than the enclosed lower trails ever offered, even in a normal year. With the Giant Stairs closed and Henry Hudson Drive still out, the cliff-top loop from State Line Lookout is likely to see more traffic than usual this fall, so an early start on weekend mornings will matter more for parking than it has in past years.

The Long Path also runs past a piece of history easy to miss if you're driving rather than walking. The trails near State Line Lookout are formally designated as culturally important to the Black history of New Jersey, marking the area's past as a Freedmen community, a history that's only visible if you're covering the ground on foot rather than passing through by car.

None of the three closures affecting the lower system have a confirmed reopening date, even with a repair plan now on record. The Palisades Parks Conservancy is accepting donations to support recovery efforts on Henry Hudson Drive, and no construction dates have been confirmed. Checking the conservancy's advisories page before heading out is still the only way to know whether Dyckman Hill Road or the Giant Stairs status has changed since this was written.

If your usual move on a clear fall Saturday has been to check the gate at Dyckman Hill Road out of habit, this is the year to break that habit early. The clifftop loop from State Line Lookout has been open the entire time, and Rockefeller Lookout has been sitting inside the borough line the whole time too, never touched by any of it.

If you're weighing a move that puts you closer to this stretch of the Palisades, or you already live here and have questions about what a property near the cliffs is actually worth this fall, Sara Shin Select knows this corridor block by block. Let's connect.