CLOSE TO THE EDGE -- Adventures at Taughannock Falls

View from Bridge (Distance between white lines is about 6 feet)

Here's the story of how I once nearly went over this waterfall without a barrel -- entirely by accident, I can assure you. Located in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York, Taughannock (tuh-GAN-ic, rhymes with "panic") is the highest straight drop waterfall east of the Mississippi, 55 feet higher than Niagra Falls. Taughannock Creek flows down through a spectacular canyon 100 feet deep, the "upper gorge", and then leaps off a cliff into free space and plunges 215 feet into an even more spectacular canyon that is over 300 feet deep. It lands on jagged boulders in a plunge pool full of treacherous currents. In the 1960s, some nitwit decided to go swimming in that plunge pool and it took them two days to fish his body out.

Well, he wasn't the only nitwit ever to visit this place, but I lived to tell the tale. When I was in my 22nd year, luckily not my last, I clambered down the steep wooded slope of the upper gorge, took off my shoes and socks, and started wading across Taughannock creek maybe 10 feet from the lip of the falls. It's certainly very scenic and exciting up there. This is strictly forbidden by law, of course, and I'm lucky I wasn't arrested. But what can I say? At that age, the testosterone made me do wacko things I'd never dream of doing now. At least I wasn't out stealing cars.

View from Canyon Rim (Photo at top of page was taken from bridge in foreground)

Anyway, I had previously crossed the creek in this very spot in late summer when the water was low. But this was early June, and when I got out into the middle of the creek, I suddenly realized that the water volume was way more than I had bargained for, and that I was being pushed toward the lip of the falls on the flat slippery rocks with nary a grip in sight. Without another thought, I was down on all fours scrambling and clawing across that creek bed. In what I'm sure was just a few seconds, but what seemed to me like a slow motion five minutes, I made it over onto the dry rocks on the far side, just at the edge of the dropoff.

I sat there for a good long while admiring the view, waiting for my heart rate to settle back below 200, and pondering the fact that the only way back that I knew of involved crossing the creek again. Well, I went further upstream to recross, and somehow made it back up out of the shaley upper gorge in spite of my trembling knees.

For several days afterward I had trouble going to sleep. As I began to drift off, I'd feel like I was falling and awaken startled, my heart pounding. I still get jelly legs when I think of that day over 25 years ago.