South Lake is the western of the two linked basins that New York State manages as the North-South Lake Campground and Day Use Area, sitting on top of the Catskill Escarpment in the Town of Hunter, Greene County. The mailing address is Haines Falls, and the drive in runs from Route 23A through Haines Falls and up County Route 18, also signed as North Lake Road. Nineteenth century guidebooks called this water Kaaterskill Lake, and old postcards still carry that name, which is worth knowing because there is a second, unrelated South Lake up in Herkimer County.

The swimming is at a sand crescent on the east shore, a short walk from the seasonal day use parking lot. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation charges the day use fee: $10 per vehicle at the gate during the operating season, which in 2026 runs May 15 through October 25. An Empire Pass covers it, and the fee is waived on weekdays for visitors 62 and older. There is no membership, no reservation and no resident restriction attached to the beach. Anyone who pays at the booth can walk down and get in.

The water here is shallow and warms early. DEC puts the lake's average depth at about five and a half feet, and the bottom off the beach shelves out slowly over sand the state has had to keep replacing. In 2017 the department trucked in more than 400 tons of sand to rebuild the South Lake beach as part of a $150,000 round of work across the campground. The same push added a fully accessible boat rental building with a concrete walkway, an EZ dock canoe and kayak launch, an outdoor shower, and a wooden boardwalk that runs all the way to the water's edge, which makes this the easier of the two beaches to reach on wheels.

Swimming is unsupervised. DEC does not post lifeguards at its campground beaches, asks people to enter the water only from the marked beach, and closes swimming from half an hour before sunset until half an hour after sunrise. The boat rental sits right at the beach and goes out in two hour blocks with the last rental at 4pm. Rowboats, canoes, kayaks and paddle boats are available, and no motors are permitted anywhere on the lake.

Until the 1970s South Lake really was its own pond, held apart from North Lake by an earthen dam. The state pulled that dam out, built a new one at the South Lake outlet, and the pair became one sheet of water, so a swim off this beach is a swim in the same body that laps the North Lake beach four tenths of a mile northeast. South Lake was still in private hands when New York bought into the area in 1929. The beaches went in during 1936.

The ledge above the lake held the Catskill Mountain House, the resort that Thomas Cole and the rest of the Hudson River School painters made famous before the state razed the ruin in 1963. Its foundation, Artists Rock, Sunset Rock, North Point, Alligator Rock and the top of Kaaterskill Falls all tie back to the lakeshore on foot. Anglers work the water for largemouth bass, yellow perch, pumpkinseed and brown bullhead, and DEC drops in roughly 300 tiger muskellunge a year. Around 54,000 day visitors and 65,000 campers come through in a typical season, the heaviest use of any state property in the Catskill Park, so a July Saturday at this beach is a busy one.