Rocky Glen Falls

Rocky Glen Falls is the last named waterfall on the Basin-Cascades Trail, above Kinsman Falls in Franconia Notch. It’s the payoff for a longer brookside walk, not the quick look at The Basin near the parking area. Plan on roughly 2.2 miles round trip and 550 feet of climbing from the trailhead. If you want a string of cascades and a more tucked-away finish, keep going; if you only want an easy waterfall view, The Basin is the simpler stop.

Start from the Basin trailhead, where parking is available on both sides of I-93, and follow the trail beside Cascade Brook. You pass smaller cascades and Kinsman Falls before crossing the brook on rocks and climbing steeply toward Rocky Glen. High water can make the crossing unsafe. This is not a wheelchair-accessible stop: the upper falls require an uneven trail and rocky crossing. The old bridge above Rocky Glen has been removed, so don’t count on continuing from here to Lonesome Lake.

The brook tumbles over jagged rock steps between narrow walls and gathers in deep, yellow-toned pools. Sources disagree on the falls’ height and number of drops, so the useful thing to notice is the stepped shape and the color of the water below. A short step down from the trail viewpoint brings you closer to the gorge, but the footing is rocky. For a photo, frame both the stepped water and a little of the pool; the walls show how tightly the brook is squeezed in.

Rocky Glen is one named fall in a roughly mile-long run where Cascade Brook drops about 600 feet through waterfalls, slides and pools. The walk earns its length through that whole sequence, with Rocky Glen at the upper end rather than as a stand-alone roadside feature.