Day 34: Spectacular Views and Surprising Suffering

 

Connellsville PA to Cumberland MD, 102 miles, 2200 feet of climbing (including a few miles and nearly 700 feet of climbing to get to our hotel).

We finished the Great Allegheny Passage Trail today which, as the title of today’s blog entry suggests, had us crossing quite a few bridges and a handful of old railway tunnels.  

We started the day by heading to Ohiopyle, a town about 20 miles from Connellsville on the Youghiogheny River (or the “Yough”) known for its whitewater. We crossed a series of bridges that provided us with great views and a few photo ops. We then spent most of the rest of the day riding the trail up to its peak at the Eastern Continental Divide (where waters disperse to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Cheasepeake Bay) - we hadn’t known that there was an eastern version of the Conti Divide either.  From there, we descended to Big Savage Tunnel, a roughly 3300 foot long repurposed railroad tunnel that cut through, oddly enough, Mount Savage. This was unquestionably a cool part of the ride - both figuratively and literally (it was at least 20 degrees cooler inside the tunnel). We also cruised through the Mason-Dixon Line as we made our way to Cumberland MD, the end point of the Great Allegheny Trail.

The biggest takeaway for us from today’s ride is how deceptive a small, almost imperceptible, percent road gradient can be. We rode for about 65 miles on a trail with a gradient of about 1 percent or less - and found that it really tired us out at times. We’re not sure if it was psychological (you feel that you should be able to coast a bit because the trail looks flat) or if it was physical - but it was surprising to us in any regard. 

Unfortunately, we were also treated - big surprise to us - to some 7 and 8 percent gradients for well over a mile (after having ridden 90+ miles on the trail) as we made our way to our hotel.  The Allegheny Trail is also referred to as the Gap Trail because, well, it travels along a gap in the surrounding mountains. Leaving the gap requires that you climb up the sides - which, of course, is where our hotel is located. It turns out that there was a work-around to what was a tough climb, but we didn’t know about it until the hotel manager expressed her sympathy for our end-of-day ordeal.

We’re in Maryland now and inching our way closer to Annapolis. There is still a ways to go and some route planning to complete - which we should get to this evening.