Eight kilometres return, grade 3, allow three and a half hours if you stop at the top pool for lunch and don't rush the granite sections on the way down. That's the Kitty's Gorge track proper. Most people who tell you they've "done the Serpentine Falls walk" have actually done about four hundred metres of it, taken a photo of the swimming hole, and gone home for a snag roll. Fair enough, it's a nice four hundred metres. But if you drove out past Jarrahdale for the falls specifically, it seems a waste to stop where the car park runs out.
Getting there and the fee gate
Serpentine National Park sits off the South Western Highway, and you turn onto Falls Road to get to the day-use area near the falls themselves. There's a vehicle entry fee at the gate, standard for a Parks and Wildlife Service-managed park, and it's worth having cash or a card ready rather than fumbling at the boom gate while someone's queued behind you on a Sunday morning. The car park fills early in warmer months. If you want the falls to yourself, or close to it, I'd point you at the piece we ran on camping near Serpentine National Park for an early walk start, because getting there before nine changes the whole experience. Arrive at eleven on a hot Saturday and you're sharing the pool with forty other people and a Bluetooth speaker.
The short walk everyone actually does
From the main car park it's a flat, shaded amble down to the base of the falls and the swimming hole, and in summer that pool is genuinely good, cold granite-country water tumbling over a rock face into a deep enough hole to actually swim in rather than just paddle. This is the bit that ends up all over social media, and I understand why. What I don't understand is the number of people who treat this as the whole walk. It's not. It's the entrance foyer. My mildly contrarian view, and I'll stand by it, is that the swimming hole gets more credit online than it deserves relative to what's twenty minutes further up the hill, and the gorge track gets almost none.
Kitty's Gorge, which is the actual falls walk
The Kitty's Gorge track picks up from near the falls and follows the Serpentine River upstream through granite outcrops, jarrah and marri forest, and a string of smaller pools that nobody photographs because they're not the famous one. The track surface changes character a few times, from formed gravel path to rock-hopping sections where you're placing your feet deliberately rather than striding out, and there's enough elevation change to call it a proper walk rather than a stroll. It finishes, or starts, depending which way you're doing it, near the old Baden Powell Water Scout camp further up the valley.
I did the full return in a pair of merino hiking socks and my older boots rather than trail runners, mostly because the granite gets slick where water's crossed the path and I didn't fancy a slide on a Tuesday when nobody else was around to hear me swear about it. Gaiters weren't necessary, the scrub doesn't crowd the track that tightly, but I carried three water bottles rather than my usual two because there's not much shade in the exposed granite stretches mid-morning and it was warmer than the forecast suggested.
How it stacks up against the Bibbulmun
I grade most WA day walks against sections of the Bibbulmun Track, because it's the yardstick I know best after enough weekends on it to lose count, and Kitty's Gorge sits somewhere around the easier Darling Range sections, nothing like the harder granite country further south. If you've walked between Dwellingup and Waalegh Hut you'll recognise the terrain type immediately, similar rock, similar forest, just a shorter commitment. The Bibbulmun Track Foundation publishes track notes and section grading that's genuinely useful for calibrating your own fitness against a walk like this one, even though Kitty's Gorge isn't part of the network itself. I'd call the "family-friendly" tag some listings put on the full gorge walk a bit generous. The swimming hole section, sure, bring the kids. The full eight kilometres with the rock scrambling near the top, less so unless your kids are already competent scramblers.
Checking conditions before you go
Track conditions change after rain, and the granite sections that are merely careful-footing in dry weather become genuinely slippery when wet, so it's worth a quick check before driving out. Trails WA keeps reasonably current notes on track status and closures for walks like this across the south-west, and it's the first place I look before committing a whole morning to a drive that might end at a closed gate. Serpentine National Park does close occasionally during total fire ban periods or after significant storm damage to the track, and there's nothing worse than the drive out only to find orange tape across the trailhead.
What I carried and what I'd skip
Three water bottles, a hat I forgot to wear for the first hour and paid for later, merino socks, boots rather than runners for the rock sections, and a paper map printed from the Trails WA notes because phone reception drops out in the gorge itself. I didn't need the gaiters and I didn't need the extra jumper I threw in the pack out of habit. What I'd add next time is a proper pair of grippy sandals for the swimming hole stop, since wet boots for the walk back are miserable and there's no changing shed to speak of.
Where it sits against the rest of the state
It's a fair question whether a half-day walk in the Perth hills is worth the drive when Margaret River and Karijini exist a few hours further out with bigger gorges and more dramatic scenery. My answer is that Serpentine isn't trying to compete with Karijini's scale, and it shouldn't be judged against it. It's an hour from the city, it's genuinely satisfying if you do the whole track rather than the postcard bit, and it doesn't require the multi-day commitment that a Karijini trip does. If you want something even shorter and flatter for the same weekend, Rottnest Island is the other end of the difficulty spectrum entirely, all bike paths and quokkas rather than granite scrambling, and there's no shame in choosing that instead depending on your legs and your patience for crowds.
The bit most people miss
What struck me on the day I walked it properly was how quickly the crowd noise from the swimming hole disappeared once I was fifteen minutes up the gorge track, replaced by actual bush quiet and the sound of the river doing its own thing over rock. That's the trade you're making for the extra hour and a half of walking, and it's a good trade if you ask me. The falls themselves are fine, pleasant, worth the photo, but the gorge above them is the part that actually earns the drive out past Jarrahdale on a Sunday morning.