Stony Clove Notch is a narrow pass, roughly 2,220 feet (677 m) in elevation located in the Town of Hunter in Greene County, New York, deep in the Catskill Mountains.

One of the Catskills' major hiking trails crosses the road near the notch, and ice climbers and snowboarders have lately been attracted to the cliffs and slopes in winter.

As painter and writer Charles Lanman said in the 1840s: It is the loneliest and most awful corner of the world that I have ever seen — none other, I fancy, could make a man feel more utterly desolate.

It is a type of valley of the shadow of death; in single file did we have to pass through it and in single file must we pass to the grave...[1]Catskill historian Alf Evers suggests that those interested in getting an idea of what Stony Clove Notch was like before the construction of the roads visit nearby Diamond Notch, where it is still possible to put one foot on Southwest Hunter Mountain and another on West Kill Mountain.

[1] A few years later, at great expense, the route through the notch was widened to allow enough room for a single wagon by Charles Edwards, a local tanner.

Later excavations allowed the Stony Clove and Catskill Mountain Railroad to build a narrow gauge rail line through the gap.

"And it will not be hard for a man with a normal amount of imagination to put himself in the place of his ancestors and see the Stony Clove transformed into the very gates of Hell.

After crossing the old railbed, the trail begins a steady ascent of 1,400 vertical feet (427 m) to the popular Orchard Point lookout, which offers a view across the notch to all the nearby peaks plus West Kill Mountain beyond Southwest Hunter.

In winter, ice climbers can also be found here seeking thrills on the cliffs on the Plateau side via a short hike; climbing is not otherwise done much in the Catskills due to the loose sedimentary rock of the region.