Most people who walk the Staten Island Greenbelt on a Saturday morning are doing the same mile. They park near the Nature Center on Rockland Avenue, take the Blue and White Trail Loop around LaTourette Park, watch the golfers, and head home. It is an easy, flat, pleasant walk, and there is nothing wrong with it. But it is also the version of the Greenbelt that looks exactly the same in July as it does in October, and if that is the only trail a person has ever walked, they have never actually seen why fall is the season locals who know the park wait for.
The reason has nothing to do with foliage color, which shows up everywhere on Staten Island this time of year. It has to do with a 200-foot rise off the Yellow Trail called Moses' Mountain, and a six-week window that just opened.
The Loop Everyone Already Knows
The Blue and White Trail Loop near the Nature Center covers about a mile with roughly 55 feet of elevation gain. It is the default entry point to the Greenbelt for a reason: it starts a short walk from parking, it is well marked, and most of it stays visible from the LaTourette golf course, so it never feels remote. The 2.6-mile Multipurpose Trail does similar work for cyclists and runners. It is a crushed-gravel path that runs from Rockland Avenue along Forest Hill Road, hugging the golf course perimeter toward Richmond Avenue, with a branch that splits off toward Historic Richmond Town and St. Andrews Church at Old Mill Road.
Both of these are good trails. Neither one changes much between September and November, which is exactly the problem if fall is the reason you are heading out there.
The Trail That Actually Climbs
The Greenbelt has four color-blazed woodland trails in addition to the loop and the multipurpose path, and they are not interchangeable. The Blue Trail runs 12.3 miles one way, ascending from Staten Island Boulevard to the crest of Todt Hill, the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard between Maine and Florida. The White Trail covers 7.6 miles, threading through Egbertville Ravine and Heyerdahl Hill on its way from Willowbrook Park to Great Kills Park inside the Gateway National Recreation Area. The Red Trail is a shorter 4-mile loop through Buck's Hollow and the edge of Lighthouse Hill.
Then there is the Yellow Trail, 7.4 miles between trailheads on Spring Street and Forest Hill Road. It is the one most casual visitors skip, and it is the one that climbs to Moses' Mountain.
| Trail | Length | What most people use it for | What changes in fall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue and White Loop | 1 mile | Easiest entry point near the Nature Center | Little beyond leaf color |
| Multipurpose Trail | 2.6 miles | Running, cycling, strollers | Little beyond leaf color |
| White Trail | 7.6 miles | Willowbrook Park to Great Kills Park | Cooler, quieter through Egbertville Ravine |
| Blue Trail | 12.3 miles | Longest hike, crosses Todt Hill | Same terrain, far fewer people |
| Yellow Trail | 7.4 miles | Least-walked of the four color trails | Climbs to Moses' Mountain, the fall raptor lookout |
Moses' Mountain sits off the Yellow Trail, reached from the entrance at the north corner of Rockland and Meisner Avenues. At 200 feet, it is one of the only real elevated overlooks in a park system that is otherwise mostly flat, second-growth forest. For most of the year that makes it a modest detour. For six weeks starting now, it makes it the best seat in the borough.
Why September Through November Matters Here
Fall is peak raptor migration across New York City's parks, and the elevated points inside the Greenbelt are where that migration actually becomes visible. Ospreys, broad-winged hawks, and eagles move through from September into November, and the places to see them are the high ground: Moses' Mountain, Pouch Camp, Paulo's Peak, and the ridgelines of High Rock Park. These are not names most Staten Islanders associate with the Greenbelt, because the easy loop trail does not pass any of them.
The eagle piece is worth sitting with. Bald eagles attempted to nest on Staten Island for years without success until 2017, when a pair finally fledged young here for the first time. They have continued nesting since, which means the eagles a hiker might see gliding over Moses' Mountain this October are not passing tourists. They are part of a population that treats this particular patch of Staten Island as home territory, the same way the people reading this do.
The Greenbelt's fall is not a color-changing backdrop. It is a migration corridor that happens to run directly over a hill most residents have never had a reason to climb.
The Conservancy's Fall Calendar
The Greenbelt Conservancy, the nonprofit that has managed this land in partnership with NYC Parks since 1989, treats fall as its own small season with its own calendar. The Blue Jean Ball, the Conservancy's annual fundraiser at the Carousel for All Children in Willowbrook Park, was held Thursday, September 17, opening the stretch. The calendar continues with something more accessible to a wider crowd: the Annual Pumpkin Festival, set for October 6, from noon to 4 p.m., also in Willowbrook Park, where pumpkins go on sale on a first-come basis alongside family activities that have included I FISH NY casting lessons at the park lake.
After the Pumpkin Festival, the Conservancy typically runs its Fall Flat 5K, a flat trail race that follows the White Trail around Willowbrook Lake and has landed on different November Saturdays in recent years. It is worth checking the Conservancy's own events calendar closer to the date rather than assuming last year's schedule repeats exactly.
None of this happens by accident. Earlier this year, Con Edison awarded the Conservancy a $70,000 Community Resilience Grant to fund the Greenbelt Conservation Corps, the volunteer group responsible for the monthly trail restoration and park cleanup work that keeps trails like the Yellow Trail passable heading into peak hiking season. The reason Moses' Mountain is walkable this week instead of overgrown is largely because of that unpaid labor.
Putting a Fall Saturday Together
A route that actually uses this season starts at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Rockland Avenue, picks up the Yellow Trail heading toward Moses' Mountain, and allows an hour or so at the top with binoculars before looping back. Bring layers. Mornings on an exposed 200-foot rise run noticeably colder than the forest floor below it, and the golf-course-adjacent sections of the Yellow and Blue Trails can still get muddy after rain even in dry-looking weather. If the hawk watch is the main event, a Saturday morning between now and early November gives the best odds, since that is the heart of the migration window.
For anyone who wants a lower-effort version of the same fall, the Pumpkin Festival on October 6 covers the community side of it without requiring a climb.
Why This Is Worth Knowing Beyond the Trail
Staten Island's identity gets flattened a lot, treated as one flat suburban story from the ferry to the mall. The Greenbelt argues against that on its own, quietly, every fall, with a hill most residents have never climbed and eagles that have chosen to stay. Knowing where Moses' Mountain is, and knowing that the six weeks starting now are the reason it exists, is the kind of detail that separates someone who has lived here from someone who has just driven through.
That is the same attention to specifics, not generalities, that shapes how Albert Benzaken works with buyers and sellers across Staten Island and Brooklyn. If you are weighing a move within the borough, or wondering what a home near the Greenbelt is actually worth in today's market, Albert's Free Home Valuation is a good place to start the conversation.
