This week I did a 335 mi (540 km) bicycle tour from Pittsburgh to Washington DC along with a group of 3 other folks from the school. This is the longest I have ever biked and covered the distance over a period of 5 days. The entire trip is divided into two trails – the 150 mile Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, followed by the 185.5 mile long Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O Canal) Towpath.
We carried camping equipment on our bikes and enjoyed a lot of flexibility in deciding where to stay each night, although we roughly followed the original plan that our group agreed upon before starting the trip. We biked for 8-12 hours during the day and stayed overnight at each of the following cities:
| Day | City | Miles | Daily Mileage | Elevation in feet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Pittsburgh, PA | 0 | 0 | 720 |
| 1 | Ohiopyle, PA | 77 | 77 | 1,230 |
| 2 | Frostburg, MD | 134 | 57 | 1,832 |
| 3 | Little Orleans, MD | 193 | 59 | 450 |
| 4 | Harpers Ferry, MD | 273 | 80 | 264 |
| 5 | Georgetown, Washington DC | 335 | 62 | 10 |
If there’s one change I could make in this schedule, it would be to avoid staying over at Harpers Ferry which involved climbing a foot bridge without any ramp for the bikes. It is even more difficult if you are carrying a lot of weight on your bike racks. On the positive side, it allowed us to experience the main streets of Harpers Ferry which is rightly called “a place in time”. Another tip that you could use is to take the Western Maryland Trail near Hancock. It runs parallel to the route and is a paved one, which provides a welcome break after long hours of riding on the C&O trail.
There are lots of campsites near the trail. There are hiker-biker camps near most major towns on the C&O trail and are free to use. We also camped at commercial campgrounds, like at the Trail Inn Campground in Frostburg, where we could use a shower. You can also get your laundry done at these places and save some luggage space. For food and drinks – I suggest that you follow the general long distance biking guidelines about eating at regular intervals while on the bike. I also strongly recommend using a hydration backpack though it adds to the weight you have carry on your shoulders.
I used a hybrid bike – Raleigh Misceo and was very comfortable riding it through all parts of the trail. I was expecting a couple of flat tires specially on the C&O sections with loose gravel and other debris on the trail, but didn’t face any problems. As long as you are not using a road bike with narrow tires you should be good on these trails. Finally for getting back to Pittsburgh we rented a minivan and put our bikes in the trunk which had ample space for 4 bikes with their front wheels taken off.
If you decide to take this tour in future, we have plenty of online guides available for each of the GAP and C&O Canal trails. For a paper-based guide, I would recommend buying the Trailbook published by the Allegheny Trail Alliance. We also created a small webapp called the GAP Map that helped us plan our trip and prepare a schedule.
Here are some of the scenic views along the tour as captured from my phone camera:
Hey trivedi,
Nice to see that you are biking. How much time did you bike each day? How did you plan to do this trip? Is this a popular biking trail?
-Karthik
P.S.: Did you lose any weight after the bike trek?
We did close to 12 hours on the first and fourth day and 8-10 hours on others. We would make a short stop after every 75 minutes of riding. We had previously done sections of the trail near Pittsburgh for prep and to know what to expect in terms of daily mileage. We also went through the trail book and online guides for tips and recommendations, and the app we built to plan a schedule for it. This is one of the longest bike trails in the US. People usually do sections of it. Unfortunately, I did not measure my weight before and after the trip 😀
Sounds cool! Can I have a look at your app if it is available?
Sure. You can see it at http://salimm.github.io/gapmap/.