The Cataracts

The Cataracts is a 50-foot tiered in Maine, on Frye Brook. The water falls in 3 distinct tiers.

It's fullest after rain, and flow can drop off during dry spells — plan around recent weather.

Plungeworthy rates The Cataracts 8.1/10 — worth the drive. The score weighs its scale, how confidently it's mapped, and its character.

The Cataracts is a set of three waterfalls in close succession on Frye Brook — an upper 20-foot drop, a tall ~70-foot middle falls that's the visual centerpiece, and a lower 12-foot cascade — packed into about 700 feet of brook, roughly 100 feet of combined drop. The gorge is narrow and rocky, with clean boulder pools between drops.

It sits on what used to be the Appalachian Trail itself before a major reroute pushed the AT onto the ridgeline; the old trail still climbs from here 3.6 miles to Baldpate Mountain's summit for hikers who want to keep going.

It reads as a more rugged, less-photographed cousin of Dunn Falls just up the road — shorter to reach, but with genuinely slippery, technical footing in the gorge section.

Best flow spring through early summer. The rocks in the gorge are repeatedly described as particularly slippery — extra caution in wet conditions or after rain.