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Submission
The park is at the south end of Cayuga Lake, on Route 13, 5 miles south of Ithaca
Amazing park. If you don’t have too much time hiking, the best way to do is to park at the Upper Entrance. You can just do portion trails of Rim and Gorge by connecting a bridge. You can start from the Rim trail to watch the front of the Lucifer Falls, then you can take the Cliffs Staircase down. Using the Bridge to connect the Gorge Trail getting back to the parking lot.
Doing the entire trails for both Rim and Gorge isn’t really much fun, as there aren’t much more to see. The beautiful parts are already in the upper side.
The Lower Falls is very close from the Main Entrance which you can swim. It is better to drive from the Upper Entrance rather take the trails.
Great park and amazing falls. We went there after Buttermilk fall State Park. The Lower fall is really close to the parking lot. We drive to another entrance instead of hiking. The upper entrance to the Lucifer Fall is short distance, too. Need to climb. Great view.
Did the full version of the gorge trail and rim trail loop. A more efficient version would be starting from the upper entrance, descending all the stairs of the rim trail to the bottom of the falls, then crossing the bridge to the gorge trail, and coming back to the parking lot from the gorge trail, this loop is about one mile. Then drive to the lower entrance to see the lower falls. The falls were beautiful.
This place was beautiful! Great views and well-kept trails. Lots of steps. If you're pressed for time park at the upper gorge area and hike the 2 mile loop to Lucifer Falls , that's definitely your best views. I came at the end of November. It would be so much fun to come here in the summer and swim! Some of the other gorges in the area had sections that were fully closed through the whole winter. I was very happy this one was open.
