Carpenter Falls may have been one of the most mentally challenging waterfalls that I visited for the project of 50 New York Waterfalls.
Carpenter Falls is a 90 foot drop waterfall located in Moravia, New York on the west side of Skaneateles Lake. Located on Bear Swamp Creek Gorge, Carpenter Falls is part of the Unique Area maintained by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and adjoined with the Bahar Nature Preserve maintained by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. Between the two entities are 87 total acres of protected land.
The waterfall drops from a 10 foot thick caprock of Tully Limestone straight down into the gorge below. Tully Limestone is a type of rock that is specific to this region (I’ll let you look up more information on your own if you’re into geology). It’s interesting that you can see visual similarities with several other waterfalls in the area that have a Tully Limestone cap. For example if you look through my Instagram feed (here) back to where I was sharing the completed pieces for this project, you can see that Tinker Falls, Ludlowville Falls, and Cowshed Falls also have this feature.
The Bear Swamp Creek Gorge is said to have four waterfalls total, 2 that are accessible by the 1.6 mile trail. During my trip I only visited the main one that is the easier to access because my itinerary that day included stopping by six different waterfall sites before ending at a picnic at the lake. (The waterfall sites visited that day were Fillmore Glen State Park, Carpenter Falls, Bucktail Falls, Tinker Falls, Stockbridge Falls, and Pratt’s Falls – all towards the eastern side of the Finger Lakes into Central New York.)