13.1

This one was my idea. I’d been on the Cayuga Trail a few times, but always around the same area. Naturally, the way to remedy that was to hike the entire trail in one day. It’s 8.5 miles one way, but moderately-fit backpackers with full loads can pretty easily hike 20 miles in a day, so at most 17 miles with light loads sounded very doable. As usual, my partner in crime adventure was my long-suffering junior year/summer roommate, who thought that hiking the Cayuga Trail in a day was a great idea.

We set out early on a Saturday morning just in case it turned out to be harder than we thought and we needed to hike into late afternoon/evening. We arrived at the trailhead by 9, at which point my roommate discovered that she had forgotten the memory card for her camera. I was really surprised because my roommate is a mature and responsible adult who’s on top of things. Except that time she forgot her ID card to go to the dining hall, and the time she had her ID card holder but not her ID card at intramural soccer, and that other time she left her ID in the suite when we went to breakfast, and – never mind.

The first part of the Cayuga Trail goes through campus, so the Cayuga Trails Club had to get a little creative with the blazes:

Later on the trail, but same idea.
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but that is indeed duct tape.

From campus, we continued on to the Plantations, making it to the visitors’ center before it was open for the day. Then through the wildflower garden by a very circuitous route, up Arboretum Road, and to the suspension bridge. From the bridge, the trail goes through a wooded area for some time. When we entered the forest, we were joined by some friends. Lots of friends, who wanted to get to know us by sucking our blood. In other words, vampires mosquitoes. (I finished the day with a mosquito kill count of 14 and a dozen mosquito bites on my right arm alone. Other highlowlights included the bite on my ear and the one on my palm.)

Suspension bridge

Most of the trail isn’t very scenic if you’re looking for waterfalls or overlooks, but there’s a section with some bluffs/cliffs. The trail’s actually been rerouted farther away from the edge because of erosion, but you can get a bit of a view from there.

Awhile after that, we found the trail register, signed it, and headed on our way. A couple hours and several thousand trees later, we emerged from the woods, crossed Fall Creek on the shoulder of the bridge shown above, and shortly found ourselves walking along a former railway. The rails weren’t there anymore, but it was a very clear and straight path running directly behind peoples’ houses, so that was a little strange. It would be convenient and easy if you wanted to get onto the Cayuga Trail, but you’d also have random people passing right by your backyard all the time.

About a mile later, we found ourselves in the woods again, on a part of the trail that was even less frequented than the previous six miles or so. Many parts of the trail hadn’t been very wide, and we’d walked through some very large Jurassic-looking plants and enough poison ivy to make a small town very uncomfortable, but here we found ourselves burrowing through a tunnel of undergrowth and tree branches. Emerging from the last of the foliage, we spotted the triple blazes on a tree that signifies the end of a trail. We’d made it. One way.

Our next decision was whether to take the Cayuga Trail back or to find an old railroad, take that partway back, walk along the road for a bit, connect to the East Ithaca Recreation Trail, and walk the remaining mile or so back to Collegetown. In the spirit of adventure, we chose to venture out into the unknown and search for the railroad. So, no . . . we didn’t really know where we were going.

We found the railroad without too much trouble, then had to navigate through a field we weren’t expecting and ended up on a different road than we had planned. It was fine though, because we knew where we were. When we reached the East Ithaca Recreation Way, we finally decided to stop for lunch. The bench we found was too hot so we sat on the grass to eat. About two minutes later, we felt a raindrop. Within fifteen seconds, it had turned into many raindrops. Naturally, we pulled out a raincoat (me) and backpack cover (my roommate) and continued to sit there eating our sandwiches.

After another three minutes, we decided it would be a good idea to go stand under a tree to finish lunch, so we did. From there, it was an easy couple miles back to Collegetown, where we passed out on the living room floor for awhile. We were gone about six hours and our total mileage for the day ended up being right around a half marathon – 13.1 miles.