The Itinerary
Using the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath I’ll be traveling from Point State Park in Pittsburgh, PA to the mouth of Rock Creek in Washington, D.C.
Together the two trails span 333.3 miles which I’ll be splitting up across six days of riding. This is following “The Ride Of Your Life” thru-trip planning from Trail Guide - Official Guide to Traveling the C&O Canal Towpath and Great Allegheny Passage.
Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath Map.
The trails are a previous railroad corridor and a canal towpath, so they’re relatively flat by cycling standards. The steepest grade encountered on the entire trip will be 5.5%. The trip has most of the elevation gain frontloaded into days one through three, until I reach the Eastern Continental Divide 15 miles into day three. After that it’ll be mainly downhill with very little elevation gain accumulated each day.
Below are the statistics for each day of riding.
Elevation Gain and Max Grade were calculated by plotting my trip on RideWithGPS.com.
| Day | Miles | Elevation Gain | Max Grade | Start | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 60.0 | 1309 | 3.5% | Downtown Pittsburgh | Connellsville, PA |
| 2 | 45.0 | 1904 | 5.5% | Connellsville, PA | Rockwood, PA |
| 3 | 43.8 | 1330 | 3.3% | Rockwood, PA | Cumberland, MD |
| 4 | 60.4 | 561 | 3.1% | Cumberland, MD | Hancock, MD |
| 5 | 63.4 | 483 | 2.8% | Hancock, MD | Harpers Ferry, WV |
| 6 | 60.7 | 519 | 1.3% | Harpers Ferry, WV | Washington, D.C. |
Lodging is going to be camping on nights one and two; a hotel in Cumberland, MD on night three; camping again nights four and five; and then reaching the end of my trip after the sixth day of riding.
There’s many sites to see and photo-ops along the way, too many to list them all in this post, but I do have a list of ‘must capture’ moments I’ll be sure to share here in posts during my ride.
T-minus 17 days.
