The Cayuga Trail is one of the shorter paths maintained by the Cayuga Trails Club. It begins at the Stewart Avenue Bridge over Fall Creek Gorge just above Ithaca Falls and continues along Fall Creek through the Cornell campus and Cornell Plantations all the way to Varna. 

The Cayuga Trail follows the rim of the Fall Creek gorge through the Cornell Campus and beyond. Can you see the orange trail marker on the large oak tree?

The Cayuga Trail above the Fall Creek Gorge on the Cornell campus

Late afternoon sunlight illuminates late fall foliage along the Cayuga Trail above Fall Creek Gorge.

 Above Triphammer Falls and Dam is little Beebe Lake.

Beebe Lake.

 Beebe Lake closes in to become a small gorge on its eastern end.

The first little waterfall just upstream from Beebe Lake

 Back farther downstream, the Suspension Bridge crosses Fall Creek Gorge, joining the Cornell Arts Quad with the neighborhood on the north side of the chasm. Sorrowfully, in recent years there were several suicides by despairing students who jumped from bridges over gorges on the Cornell campus. Amid much controversy, Cornell administrators decided to put up high fences on the sides of all the bridges over the gorges and along cliffs by the trail.

The Suspension Bridge over Fall Creek Gorge joins the Arts Quad with the Thurston Avenue neighborhood on the north side.

 The fences may have prevented additional distressed students from impulsively “gorging out,” as it used to be called. But they also have put a frustrating aesthetic barrier between pedestrians, motorists and the spectacular beauty the gorges present.

The fence on the Stewart Avenue bridge over Fall Creek Gorge. Cayuga Lake is in the top distance and the lip of Ithaca Falls is on the bottom.

Cornell plans to install safety nets below most bridges over Cascadilla and Fall Creek gorges near its campus. Hopefully these will be effective for their purpose with minimum obstruction of the views, and will permit the removal of most of the fences. See a TV broadcast about the nets.

Meanwhile, Cornell has become a leader among universities in providing students, faculty, and staff with resources to identify and help students who are at risk of suicide.

See the New York Times article last year about the fences.