May 19, 2023
Day 1: Shepherdstown to Hancock, then back a little
IT'D BEEN A WHILE since I last rode and camped on the C&O Canal National Historic Park. Since I live just ten miles away from the Great Falls Visitor's Center and 16 miles from Riley's Lock, it's easy to get out for day rides and walks. I've even been known to bend NPS rules slightly and drive out to Edwards Ferry, park, and ride the half mile or so to the nearest hiker-biker campsite for an easy overnight or two-night camping excursion when I just want to get out for a change of scenery. But riding and camping farther afield isn't something that's been on my agenda much of late.
For one thing, although the canal is 184.5 miles long, nicely shaded, and mostly empty of people except for the few miles on either side of the towns along its route, it's also kind of monotonous: most miles look a lot like one another. Having ridden the entire length of the thing on several occasions, there's little novelty or new experiences to be had.
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The surface is mostly hard-packed dirt or fine gravel, so there's also incessant beating-up of my hands and wrists leading to numbness and discomfort. Even riding a front-suspension mountain bike with tires inflated to well under their maximum pressure mitigates, but fails to entirely eliminate, this annoyance.
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Still, having not ridden at all in a month I needed to get in some miles so when my friend Wil announced on Monday that he'd be starting from Cumberland on Friday and would love to have me along for company I decided it was time for another go. Getting all the way to Cumberland posed logistical problems for me, particularly since I had a prior engagement on the Sunday that required me to be home by mid-morning. It's a 2 1/2 hour drive between Cumberland and Rockville, so that made Cumberland a non-starter. I needed to start at a place that was within an easy distance of where we'd end up on Saturday evening, so that I'd have just a short ride Sunday to get back to my car.
I elected to drive out to and park at Lock 38, just across the Potomac from Shepherdstown WV and about an hour from home, then ride upstream toward Wil as he made his way downstream. We expected to meet somewhere around Hancock MD: 60 miles for him, 50 or so for me. We'd camp for the night on Friday, ride and camp together Saturday, then part ways Sunday: he would continue 60-odd miles downstream to finish at Mile 0 in DC, while I returned 10 miles upstream to my car and headed home from there.
It was a beautiful sunny day for a ride, starting on the cool side in the low 50s but warming into the low to mid 70s as the day progressed. With fresh legs and a bit of the adrenaline surge that often coincides with the start of a ride, I made progress at a steady 11-12 mile an hour clip, taking brief breaks every now and again to take pressure off my hands, wrists, and the points of contact between me and the bike seat.
My mountain bike has no eyelets for racks, so I was towing my gear in my B.o.B. Yak trailer. I've found this to be an excellent piece of gear for such purposes and it proved to be so again today.
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As I made my way upstream on Friday I sent Wil a steady stream of progress update text messages. Unfortunately, he didn't get them because the stretch he was covering has very poor cellular coverage so he was offline and out of communications range for much of the day.
As a consequence he wasn't aware that I had left the towpath at around mile 114 just upstream from Fort Frederick, a masonry-fortified stronghold dating back to the French and Indian War of the 1750s, in favor of the paved and oh-so-much smoother Western Maryland Rail Trail (WMRT). The WMRT parallels the towpath on the opposite side of the remains of the canal bed and runs all the way into Hancock at milepost 124. When the trees are bare it's easy for users of one to see users of the other but once the trees leaf out they're visually isolated from one another.
I needed to find a place to replenish my drinks supply, and there are several opportunities in the town of Hancock to accomplish that. None of them, however, are within sight of the towpath as it passes along the edge of town.
The canal is dotted with small primitive campsites specifically for use by people who are hiking or biking the towpath. Each site has a picnic table, hand-pumped well, and porta-potty as well as ample room for several tents. There's one such site a couple miles upstream from Hancock and another about an equal distance downstream.
We had agreed to target the Little Pool site, the downstream campsite, as our meeting spot and overnight stop. It makes a good point from which to get to the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, 60 or so canal miles away, the next day. However, I had somehow convinced myself during the day that we'd be better off meeting at White Rock, the upstream site. I had texted that change to him but he never received it and had already passed the site by the time he got back into communications range.
You can guess what happened: while I was away from the canal, Wil arrived in town and took a short break, then kept riding along the canal towpath toward Little Pool, our agreed-upon meeting place. In the meantime, I was still headed upstream toward White Rock, so our trajectories were now diverging rather than converging as they had for most of the day.
Happily, the issue came to light fairly quickly. After a couple of confused texts from Wil we agreed that he would stop and wait for me to backtrack a couple miles and meet up at one of the locks.
While he was stopped and waiting, another through-rider happened by and struck up a conversation with him. It turned out to be none other than fellow CycleBlazer Kerry Smith, who's in the process of riding from his home in Florida out to the west coast, following the East coast north to DC then heading west to central Indiana, north through Michigan, then west again to finish in Anacortes WA.
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Finally united, we continued downstream to Little Pool and set up camp. We filtered enough water (the NPS has marked all of the wells at the hiker-biker campsites as producing non-potable water, advising that it be treated, filtered, and/or boiled before consumption) for our cooking and drinking needs, made and ate dinner (Wil brought home-cooked food ready to eat, I had a freeze-dried backpacker meal), and got cleaned up.
It's an inescapable fact that riding the towpath will make you dirty. In dry conditions such as we had today there's grit and dust kicked up by your front tire; it adheres readily to sweaty legs. In wet conditions, there's mud and grit from both wheels (unless your bike has fenders, which my mountain bike does not) so you get a filthy stripe up your back to go along with your grimy shins and calves.
Last summer I grew pretty adept at taking minimal-water sponge picnic-table baths. They were good for getting the day's sweat and grime mostly removed; I revived the practice this evening and felt much better for it when I was finished.
During the day Wil had been leapfrogging with two other sets of riders: three guys from Tennessee out having a few days' lark, and another couple who had also started from Cumberland at about the same time. We all ended up at Little Pool but didn't interact much with one another in the evening, preferring the company of our respective companions and, soon enough, the privacy of our own tents after the day's exertions.
Having settled in for the evening, two facts quickly emerged. Little Pool, for all its advantageous location close to Hancock, sits essentially within sight and hearing of Interstate 70. The rush of traffic noise was to be our constant companion throughout the night; even in the wee hours there's a pretty steady stream of vehicles to be heard.
It's also within clear audible distance of at least two, possible three, rail lines. Throughout the night our slumbers (ahem) were punctuated with the sound of diesel locomotives and their air horns- not immediately on top of us, thankfully, but not so far into the distance as to go unnoticed either.
I never sleep particularly well on my first night in a tent. Tonight was no different: I think I woke up and rolled over a dozen times or more. Happily it was easy enough to get back to sleep each time, so by morning I felt reasonably well rested and refreshed.
Today's ride: 59 miles (95 km)
Total: 59 miles (95 km)
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I take all blame and responsibility for the initial missed connection, as it was me who left the towpath and deviated from the original plan.
10 months ago