For a long time, I’ve been wanting to bike the whole C&O canal towpath. For those unfamiliar, the C&O canal was built in the late 1700s the transport freight but by the time it was actually finished, railroads had become a thing and worked way better than a canal so overall it was a financial failure. What was a failure for canal investors ended up being a major success for bicycles, as the gravel path the mules walked on to tow the canal boats has been preserved as a national park and has created a 180 mile (almost) perfectly flat trail from Cumberland MD to Georgetown. You should read Jake’s awesome article in the fall newsletter to get the whole story about this, it is a wild ride. But anyways, back to 2026.
Our group was me, my husband Devin, Tae, Jake, and Brian M. Jake had taken the train to Pittsburgh earlier in the week to complete the Great Allegheny Passage trail, which is another gravel rail trail between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, and Brian M biked from his home in Ohio, to Pittsburgh, to Cumberland on the GAP. All on a folding bike with a trailer! Our plan was to meet at the first campsite, Evitt’s Creek, which was about 5 miles east of Cumberland. Devin, Tae, and I all took the Amtrak Floridian from DC on Friday afternoon. On our way to the train station, Devin got a flat tire which was a concerning omen. Luckily, we were right next to REI and they were able to pop in a new tube real quick. We needn’t have hurried, because the train ended up arriving an hour late anyway.
Lesson #1: I booked the train tickets with the bike spot in advance. Each train only has space in the luggage car for 6 bicycles. I just booked with random names with the assumption I could change the names later when I knew who would be on the trip. However, Amtrak actually has airplane rules where you can’t update names after booking the tickets so I had to cancel and re-book. This was fine because the bike spots immediately became available again and I had bought refundable tickets, but in the future I would just have everybody book their own ticket.
Spirits were high, as we were on track to get to Cumberland around 8, meet up with Jake, and maybe grab a bite to eat before going to our campsite. Unfortunately due to unrelenting rain, Brian M took the train back from Cumberland. I think we were all surprised how cold our hands and feet were with the wet, but I’ll get to that later. The three of us on the train started to grow concerned when the train was stopped outside Brunswick for about half an hour. Soon enough, the conductor came on the PA to tell us that our engine had mechanical issues and needed to be replaced. Well, that is not ideal. Long story short we had to wait around 5 hours in all for the replacement engine and we ended up in Cumberland a bit after midnight. At this point, the rain had started up again and it was coming down pretty hard. As were were getting our bikes out of the luggage car, another guy with a bike told us that instead of biking 5 miles south to Evitt’s Creek, we should go a mile north to the YMCA campground. We thanked him for the tip, but continued to Evitt’s creek since Jake was camped there waiting for us.
Lesson #2: We should have stayed at the YMCA campground. It is closer, and Evitt’s Creek campsite is sort of in an exposed depression that became pretty swamped with the rain. I think we all ended up with water in our tents on Friday night. There were also extremely loud jackhammer construction noises all night long that were loud enough to be heard through earplugs. If I do this again, will definitely be staying at the YMCA campground instead.
We woke up Saturday morning to the realization that everything was wet, and as Saturday was going to be our rainiest day, nothing was going to be able to dry. Being memorial day weekend, every hotel and Airbnb along the trail was fully booked. We were desperate to find a dry place to stay to give all our gear a chance to dry out. In a stroke of luck, I had downloaded some guy’s google maps map of the C&O canal. His map had the C&O Cycles bike shop in Hancock marked as lodging. Was this just a mistake, or did he know something we didn’t know? I looked at the website, and sure enough this bike shop has a hostel behind it called the “Chicken Coop” that is basically unfindable on google since it’s buried in their website. I called the bike shop as soon as it opened, and we were ecstatic to hear that there were beds available for us. For $15 a pop, you get a plain bunk, hot shower, and covered shed to store your bike. The bunks are in an open-air lean-to shelter with the open wall fenced in with chicken wire so it really did feel a bit like a human chicken coop, but we were not complaining. Now that we had dry sleeping quarters to look forward to, we hit the road with a little less dread of the wet weather.
We stopped for lunch at the Schoolhouse Kitchen in Oldtown, which was a cozy break from the rain. The town used to have a high school but it was closed in the 90s and has been converted to a diner and little store, and you can look at all the old class photos. Devin suffered another flat tire on the same wheel, so we were a bit concerned that there was something we weren’t catching in the rim or the tire but we patched it up and continued. It was honestly a pretty rainy day but we got through it. Later in the day, the rain finally cleared.
The next highlight was the Pawpaw tunnel. Last time I did this section the tunnel was closed, so it was very cool to be able to go through it! It is super dark so have your light handy. We walked the bikes through as the signs demanded, and it was good since the walkway is very rocky and full of giant holes. When we got out the other side, all the recent rain made tons of waterfalls into the gorge and it was beautiful! There was a lot of water on the trail, even a few inches of running water which felt a little sketchy but we were able to ride through it all.
Some of us did the last dozen or so miles on the Western MD rail trail to get a break from the mud. When we got to Hancock, we were greeted by the lovely sight of a fire in the firepit at the C&O Cycles chicken coop. We set out our stuff to dry and took advantage of the amazing hot showers (with towels provided!) and large bike shed to air everything out. I 100% recommend staying at this place, it is so cheap and it was fun to meet the other cyclists out on the trail. We got dinner at Buddylou’s Eats Drinks and Antiques, which was a crazy restaurant/antique store combo situation. I think we all got an excellent night of sleep at the chicken coop and finally dried out a little.
The next morning, we were excited for a drier forecast. Unfortunately, I woke up to a flat tire so got a bit of a late start fixing it. During that time, we got a text from Jake that he saw a bear on the towpath! Pretty crazy! We all met up at Fort Frederick state park in the afternoon, just in time for a very cool Civil War reenactment rifle demonstration. The reenactors had tents set up in the fort, and we asked them if they had spent the night out. The tents were of course, civil war cotton tarps and did not look very rain proof. They told us they were allowed to spend the night in the actual reconstructed barracks, but assured us they did period-accurate activities like play cards. They also gave us some homemade hardtack, which was pretty tasty! Maybe a new UL food strategy? We hung out there for a while, and stopped at the very nice fully plumbed bathrooms. The state park also has cabins that looked very nice and could be a fun place to stay for a C&O trip. As we were leaving, I heard a whistle from my bike and saw that I had yet another flat tire. What had we done to earn the wrath of the tire gods? This leads me to my next tip:
Lesson #3: Go tubeless, have puncture-resistant tires, or be prepared to potentially be patching your tubes a lot. Devin and I got 4 flats between the two of us, and we both bike nearly every day on DC roads and don’t have issues. We both also had tubeless-ready rims, which makes it quite difficult to get the tire on and off if you have weak hands (me) and it wasted a lot of time. As soon as we got back I set my wheels up tubeless. Jake and Tae didn’t have any problems, so we might have just gotten very unlucky idk
We stopped for lunch in Williamsport (which has a Sheetz), and then met up for dinner in Shepardstown. I recommend stopping there, it is a really cute college town with a lot of restaurants. We also got ice cream at Rock Hill Creamery, which had a unique style of ice cream that was quite good. After dinner, we rode the last 10 miles in the dusk and set up camp at Huckleberry Hill campsite. This is probably one of the nicer C&O campsites since it is far from rail and traffic noise.
In the morning, we planned on skipping Harper’s Ferry since we would pass it very early and instead stop at Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick, which is a coffee shop inside an old church. As we passed Harper’s Ferry, it looked like the temporary stairs on the pedestrian bridge are still up and they have not completed the new bridge, so it would have been hard to bring the bikes up there. We biked into Brunswick, crossing the railroad tracks between the town and the towpath (this is foreshadowing). We had a delicious breakfast at Beans in the Belfry and ran into another group we had been leapfrogging on the towpath. Nobody minded that at this point we were basically coated in mud, but we were careful to wipe off our chairs before leaving. The breakfast sandwiches and coffee were very good. We were happily biking back to the towpath when, much to our consternation, there was a freight train stopped on the tracks we had crossed earlier on the edge of town. What is this, we wondered? How can a train just sit here and block the road? We asked some people waiting in their cars how long it had been, and it had been there 20 minutes already. Apparently, this is a common occurrence in Brunswick. Some wise cyclists who had arrived after us had locked their bikes to the fence on the other side of the track, so they could simply run over the ladders between the train cars which seemed like a much less risky operation than transferring the bikes under or over the train.
We waited around hoping the train would move, but as the clock ticked on we started discussing our options. We could bike on rural highways until the next town and then get back on the towpath, but the elevation was a few thousand feet in just a couple miles and google maps showed roads with 45mph speed limit and no shoulder. As we were discussing, another crew of cyclists rolled up. They saw the stopped train and we told them we were thinking of detouring. They said that was crazy, since the road is extremely steep. Then they all kind of huddled together and discussed. Then all of a sudden, like a well-oiled machine, they made a break for it! One guy climbed the ladder to get to the other side of the train, and then they passed the bikes under the train and ran for it. We had never seriously considered the possibility of sliding the bikes under the train, but after seeing them do it we started to talk through our plan. We were debating whether or not it would be better to take the bags off when suddenly, the train started moving! We rejoiced! It was a very long train and we still couldn’t see the end of it when, a few minutes, later, it started slowing down…uh oh. With crushing disappointment, we saw the train come to a stop yet again, and this time we wouldn’t even have the option of running under the train because the type of train car on the section of train and the road crossing was different and only had a very narrow arch to pass under. We agreed this was way too sketchy and it would not be worth getting run over by a train to save a few hours. At least the train station had a nice bathroom and water refilling station. We ended up just waiting until the train finally moved, which wasn’t too much longer.
Lesson #4: If you stop in Brunswick, park your bike BEFORE crossing the train tracks! That way, if the train comes you can quickly climb the ladders between the cars or run underneath. For legal reasons, that is a joke and I would never advocate crossing live train tracks
After being freed from our railroad prison, Tae headed back to Harper’s ferry to catch the Amtrak back because of a knee issue flaring up. Luckily, a bike spot became available on the Monday Floridian. Devin, Jake and I headed home to DC. We stopped at White’s Ferry for lunch, but ended up eating our own food because the deli is closed on Mondays 😦 We passed through Great Falls and took the boardwalk out to Olmstead Island. The falls were impressive with all the rain. This is random but we also saw I think 4 different Barred owls during the day on Monday, which is crazy. As we got close to DC, we were a little concerned about what to do with our bikes since they were completely caked in mud and we don’t have a hose at our apartment. We did find a place that let us hose down the bikes – I don’t want to blow up the spot but reach out to me if you’re curious. We all switched over to the Capital Crescent trail at Fletcher’s cove, and luckily we had Jake who knows DC history better than everybody to lead us to the official Mile 0 marker, which is tucked away behind the Georgetown boathouses in a place I don’t think I could have found. Jake explained that this point was originally called the ‘Watergate,’ since it connected the various DC waterways with the canal. Hence, the Watergate hotel. It is funny that we can trace concepts like Pizzagate, which would be completely unintelligible to a 1700s person, back to this one weird economic failure of a canal which barely even got used.
Overall, this was an awesome trip with great people! The conditions were tough, but with the help of the Chicken Coop and determination we made it home. I guess this brings me to the final lesson:
Lesson #5: Biking in sustained rain is just really difficult to deal with in a way that backpacking in the rain isn’t. Since your bags are waterproof, it’s hard to dry anything. The road/path stays wet a long time even after the rain stops, so you can’t strap stuff to the outside to dry out after the rain stops or it gets covered in mud. Every piece of clothing becomes so much more dirty, as in literally covered in dirt, compared to backpacking. Hands and feet get a lot colder since they aren’t activated as much. I had waterproof socks and my feet were still eventually soaking wet and cold. Tae had cycling shoe covers and said he faced the same. Even with temperatures in the 50s at the lowest, waterproof and/or warm gloves and socks were a must. Fenders might have helped some with the dirt and if I was going to do a trip on wet gravel again, I would seriously consider getting quick fenders like the SKS speedrocker or similar. If you’re wondering if your bike can handle the towpath, it probably can unless you have pure road tires. Devin had 32mm tires on a commuter bike and had no problems. At this point, most of the trail has been resurfaced and the stretch between great falls and DC is probably the worst. For bags, we had a variety of styles, some bikepacking and some panniers and they all worked well. Having feed bags in the front is helpful for snacking. My honest take after this experience? If I do a bike trip longer than a couple nights, I am going to plan ahead on alternating wild camping with campground camping or hotels/hostels. These accommodations do book up very quickly on the GAP and C&O so you unfortunately can’t just show up and get a spot, although I think we got lucky in Hancock because of the bad forecast keeping people home. My usual UL strategy of rinsing and alternating socks and underwear doesn’t work so well with chamois because they are so thick, and as mentioned earlier it is really hard to dry stuff out on a bike because it will get dirty if on the outside and at least for me, I don’t generate as much body heat as with hiking so it’s hard to just dry stuff by wearing it. Fenders might help somewhat with this, but if it’s actively raining there will just be no way to dry something out. I’m really curious to hear from anyone who has experience with cycling in foul weather, so please share your tips!! We have a lot to learn! If you made it to this point, thanks for reading and I hope this helps you plan a trip on the C&O!
DC UL Backpacking 
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