A little late here, but before I publish the 2019 Edition, I had to at least get the basics of the 2018 Edition published. I’m not going to publish a lot about the experience because this ride is a well trodden, eh hem, path. However, it did happen to be the wettest spring in recorded history so we experienced at best wet or at worst hard rain the whole time. A few illustrative photos:

Start of the GAP in Pittsburgh

Mile 0 in Georgetown

The best of conditions (GAP)

The worst of conditions (C&O)

Read on for a brief report of this bikepacking trip:

Any readers of this blog – Bueller, Bueller, Bueller – are sure to know I’ve been talking about some long distance bike touring for some time. Finally some motivation, in the form of an email from an ABRT teammate, came along: “Hey, let’s ride from Pittsburgh to DC in 4 days.” Of course without thinking too much, I was IN. We went back and forth on the details but in the end we picked the third weekend in June to do the GAP/C&O.

We ended up riding the roughly 340 miles in 4 days. A bit on the aggressive side (most people do this ride in 5-8 days) with two long days to start, followed by two medium days:

Day 1: Pittsburgh to Confluence – 90 miles (Strava: GAP/C&O day one, Champagne Ride)

Day 2: Confluence to Little Orleans – 104 miles (Strava: GAP/C&O day two, the Little Orleans Shit Show)

Day 3: Little Orleans to Shepherdstown – 73 miles (Strava: GAP/C&O day three, hours of cyclocross mud, yee hah)

Day 4: Shepherdstown to Washington – 77 miles (Strava: GAP/C&O Day 4: A bit less mud 🙂)

It was a fun trip but hard, especially when getting to Little Orleans as there was a massive power outage in the area and 15 Mile Creek was way over its banks which made getting to the lodging and dinner, uh, difficult, thus the name of the Strava ride. But as they say, “What happens in Little Orleans, stays in Little Orleans”.

For a full album of photos see: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3vdfUU61LZHcNh4H9