DC -> Pittsburgh on car-free trails, 2022 (C&O/GAP)
For years I’ve daydreamed about biking from DC to Pittsburgh on mostly car-free dirt trails, on a ~330 mile winding route that combines the C&O Canal Trail (a dirt trail formerly used by mules to pull cargo barges along the C&O canal in the 1800s, a transportation method that eventually lost to the railroad, and was nearly converted to roads before being preserved as a park in the 1970s) and the Great Allegheny Passage (a combination of rail trails integrated and completed in 2013).
This was the year I made it happen, joined by several friends and friends-of-friends willing to tackle the challenge of biking and camping on dirt for a week carrying all our own gear.
I had a great time-- biking through lush and sometimes humid greenery, being surrounded by insect- and bird-sound in the evening, rarely seeing a car, being able to ride at a relaxed pace without constantly looking out for crossing traffic, with a feeling (especially during the earlier C&O half of the trip) of being out in the woods.
I won’t give an overview of the route, as there is already plenty of good information about the trails online, but I’ll write down some details of our particular trip's logistics, in case it's useful to anyone else. But first, some photos:
Route, Distance, Timing
I’ve read of people taking anywhere from 3(!) to 12 days to travel this route. Our group was experienced with 30-50 mile rides, and while some of us had done much longer rides that was years ago... so we decided to set a goal of 7.5 days / 7 nights, or about 45 miles/day. This ride would be partly on dirt and we'd be carrying all our gear so we expected to be slower… but we’d also have all day to do each day’s ride. Even at a casual 10mph you only need to get in 5 hours of active biking time to cover 50 miles... we often spent ~8 hours to cover that distance including various stops.
We expected that the C&O canal section would be tougher and slower going due to the rougher trail, especially if it got really muddy due to a rainstorm (Narrator: "it did"), so we decided to start our trip with the C&O canal section, and end with a few faster days on the smoother (and, slightly-downhill) crushed limestone GAP trail– I think this was a good call.
I had an initial sketch of where we might stay each night based on terrain and major sightseeing, but one of the nice aspects of this route is there are free hiker/biker campsites every 5-10 miles along the C&O canal trail (and towns with potential B&Bs or AirBNBs every 20-30 miles), so it was easy to adapt our schedule on the fly. After a rainy and muddy first night (and some uncertainty about how long the Paw Paw Tunnel detour would take), we decided to push a bit farther than average the first few days, to build up some buffer for the unexpected.
Our actual ride was something like the below. Note that the distances below are the “on trail” distances– in practice we often ended up biking about 5 more miles if you include detours into towns and landmarks.
Day 1: Picked up rental bikes, rode 43 miles to Indian Flats campground which was farther than I thought we'd cover our first day, but everything went surprisingly smoothly. This was one of many free primitive campgrounds with a porta potty and a well but not much else. This one had officially potable water that was very yellow (almost certainly from iodine, but we still filtered it to be safe). Stopped for lunch at Whites Ferry Grill. Rain at night after we were in our tents.
Day 2: A tougher ~57 miles to Williamsport (@ mile 100) to make it to an AirBNB a few people wanted to stay in after a restless hot and humid night of camping. We ate dinner at Tony’s Pizza Cafe and Restaurant (good food, very nice people) and some of us took advantage of sleeping indoors, while some stayed at the free Jordan Junction campground ~2 miles farther along the trail.
Day 3: ~41 miles to Fifteenmile Creek campground (@ mile 141), with a stop in Hancock for lunch and groceries. Half of us took the parallel West Maryland Rail Trail to skip maybe 10-15 miles of the C&O trail and it was smooth sailing-- highly recommended... though we arrived at the same time as the folks who took the C&O.
We’d planned to camp a few miles earlier at Indigo Neck, but the well pump was broken– I’m glad we pushed a few miles farther to a well-outfitted campground with river access ($20/site, and we were the only people there). We cooked a good puttanesca-inspired pasta in camp just as it started to rain...
Day 4: A much muddier and rougher last ~44 miles to Cumberland (@ mile 184.5, the end of the C&O trail). Camped outside the YMCA ($15, hot showers (BYOtowel), sauna). Three very loud trains drove right by the campsite at night-- I didn't sleep well and probably wouldn't stay here again.
Most food in town had closed at 9pm when we were all set up and showered, but we found a local bar with pub food and open mic night.
Day 5: A short day, with a gradual uphill (slower but easy) up and over the Continental Divide, about 32 miles to Meyersdale. Some of us stayed in a B&B, some camped at the Maple Festival Campground (free firewood!), but we cooked and ate dinner in the AirBNB together.
Day 6: ~40 miles to Ohiopyle in time for a late afternoon Fallingwater tour. Then we pushed our bikes 1/3 of a mile uphill on gravel to Ohiopyle State Park and cooked in camp (couscous w/ dehydrated veg and spices and fresh corn on the grill-- campground firewood and checkin were available, though up a hilly road into the campground center).
Day 7: ~50 miles (on the smoother / easier GAP trail) to the Dravo hiker-biker campsite (nice campground: free firewood, but active raccoons-- hang all food including snack bars in bike bags!), with long leisurely stops in Connellsville for lunch / ice cream and West Newton for dinner, a beer, and music.
Day 8: A short and early day (27 miles) to arrive in Pittsburgh to return bikes.
Gear and Packing
We packed as you would for any biking + camping trip, there are plenty of resources about that. However, a few of the perhaps less obvious things that people packed and seemed to find useful:
Chain tool (and spare master link)-- see below
Crocs or flip flops to wear in camp or even biking if your shoes get wet
Camp clothes to change into to avoid standing around in bike gear
Camp chairs (two folks brought them– a bit bulky but nice-- some campsites didn't have picnic tables)
Mini binoculars (birds, toads, snakes, and turtles were widely present but skittish)
2+ stoves and gas canisters (convenient for cooking for a group of 6– e.g. making pasta and sauce in parallel)
At least one group meal's worth of some easy to cook food-- in our case this was a bag of enough couscous, spices, and dehydrated vegetables for six people, and a few cook-in-bag dehydrated camp meals. Good for a night when you planned to go into a town to eat or shop but that’s miles away and you're tired...
Bathing suit. Some folks swam almost every day, we were often along a river (the C&O canal was usually sludgy and filled with algae or even dry– not swimmable).
Mechanical Issues
It was a slightly challenging week mechanically, especially on the muddy post-rain days– across the group we had a total of four flats, two broken chains (the second time just re-separating at the original break), and two lost spokes. Fortunately, we had the tools and knowledge to fix or continue along. It was worth bringing 1-2 spare tubes and real vulcanizing-rubber patch kits– the patches didn’t always hold up, as well as having the ability to field-splice a chain (after doing it the hard way once, I was introduced to the magical world of the master link– very convenient).
The flats seemed to mostly be from bits of glass or metal through the tire, a bit surprising as we were primarily riding on dirt and gravel trails, but that happens. Most of the mechanical issues were during the rougher, muddier C&O canal trail section.
Favorite stops in “civilization”:
My personal favorite parts of the trip were mostly the riding and camping out in nature, but a few memorable pit stops along the way:
White’s Ferry Grill – enormous sandwiches, some snacks for sale, outdoor seating
Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick MD - coffee, pastries, other food
Dinner at Tony’s Pizza Cafe and Restaurant in Williamsport– good spaghetti + meatballs
Cumberland Trail Connection (CTC) Bikes in Cumberland for spare parts, snacks, and so on– it’s also the business a few friends rented bikes from (including a drop-off in DC and pick up in Pittsburgh for an extra fee) and were very happy with.
The bike shop in Hancock right by the trail (didn’t write down the name)
The guided indoor tour (reserved a few months ahead of time) at Fallingwater
The hamburger at the Rock City Express (gas station / corner store) in Rockwood– the only thing we found open in town, and delicious
The grilled paninis at Mitch’s Fuel & Food in Confluence
The Connellsville Canteen– good peach cobbler, fascinating and packed rooms of local history and an elaborate railroad model with a good story behind it.
Kickstand Kitchen in Connellsville solely for the Nightingale ice cream sandwiches sold from a cooler.
Other Observations:
Don’t count on Google or Yelp for accurate opening hours– in the smaller towns, businesses may or may not be open even depending on the month– a handful of places we had sketched out as potential meals had just closed for the season, and a few were only open 4-5 days/week.
The official $10 trail guide is worth the money / worth bringing along-- it has good context about towns and sites you'll pass each day.
About half of us had cell service at any given time-- but especially on the C&O some folks might go a day without cell service, so we intentionally set backup plans ("if we get separated, we'll meet at ____") and never let anyone ride alone and out of sight behind the rest of the pack.
Don’t count on daily access to groceries– you won’t starve, but in some towns your best bet is a Dollar General or similar store where you may be able to get dry pasta and a can of something.
We carried a bit over one full dinner’s worth of “backup food”, which was just enough (and it was fun to improvise a good dinner out of what we could find), though we had one day we didn't find anywhere open for lunch and just ate energy bars and fruit for lunch on the trail. If I did it again I might have done more grocery shopping in DC and carried ~2 dinners and ~2 lunches worth of food just to give us more flexibility on not needing to go into a town to shop or being able to stop for a trailside picnic not in a town.
Some of the hiker/biker campsites will not have running water. There’s a park service web site that claims to show an updated list of which wells are closed, but it was wrong three times for us. Fortunately, it was typically 2-4 miles more riding to just get to the next camp site. But I later got in the habit of refilling water when passing a campground even if I was still 50% full.
I brought the equivalent of 3-4 water bottles of capacity (but I tend to drink a lot of water)
Bring your own TP.
The shortcut path (steepish walk-your-bike gravel) to Ohiopyle State Campground from the GAP isn’t on Google Maps (which would send you on a long 4+ mile road detour if you blindly trusted it). But it’s well marked on paper maps and on the trail itself.
In general, web sites for tunnels, detours, and so on may be wildly out of date or inaccurate. The most accurate information came from talking to riders going the other way on the trail, followed by the C&O/GAP facebook group just because it gets multiple daily posts from people who’ve just done the ride.
Understand everyone's travel style-- some people may want to plan and know all the details up front. Some may want to just show up for the trip knowing ~nothing and go with the flow and improvise. One good way to meet in the middle was a 'daily briefing' I started doing over dinner, where I'd give a quick overview of the next day (expected terrain, major towns, stretches without civilization such that we should be sure to get food beforehand, and so on).
Some nice shots of the #YoughRiver I took this morning working at #TheOutpostEatery These are some great views if you’re on the #GAPtrail https://www.instagram.com/p/ChfZE5OuCQJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Woo-HOO, all video recaps from my @gap_trail adventure last year are now up on #YouTube 🚴♂️❤️🚴♀️ >>The playlist link is in our bio! (There’s four ... I might have gotten carried away. 😂) Can’t wait to head back tomorrow!! ❤️ #gaptrail #greatalleghenypassage #biketour #cycling #joyfuljumpshot #joyfulmiles (at Cumberland, Maryland) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzYzim1HDcS/?igshid=a9elfbj5wbee
Winston came from LA to do the Great Allegheny Passage & C&O Canal Towpath from Pittsburgh to DC. So he stayed with me on his first night. So I took him to Apteka.
A Lucky Frans man always has a sense of adventure. #cumberland #gaptrail #b&ocanal #bikepacking #biking #adventure #travel #md #tourlife #adventuretravel (at Cumberland, Maryland) https://www.instagram.com/p/BoKr442D4IR/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=gjgq3gky1m14
321 miles on the #GAPtrail and more: ✅ 🚴🏻♀️ Next big goal: the #BaltimoreMarathon 🏃🏻♀️ Let the training begin! #charmcityrun #charmcity @baltrunfest #kingcrabchallenge #running
We did it! 300 miles on the #greatalleghenypassage from Cumberland to Pittsburg and back. (Our total tally was 321 counting side rides.) I have some catching up to do here but it was THE MOST AMAZING TRIP EVER and I’m ready to do it again! Maybe even tackle the #chesapeakeohiocanal next. 🚴🏻♂️🚴🏻♀️ #gaptrail #biketour #cyling #cyclinglife #joyfulmiles #bolaranniversary (at Cumberland, Maryland)
