Biking the GAP Trail Part 2 - West Newton to Connellsville

• Dates Biked:  April 3 & 4, 2023
• Posted Mileage: Mile Post 121 in Buena Vista to Milepost 89 in Connellsville
• Total miles Tracked: 12.4 April 3, 51.51 April 4
• Type of Trail: Rail trail, crushed surface
• Conveniences: Trailheads with bathrooms at West Newton and Connellsville, plus restaurants and lodging adjacent to the trail 
• Best Features: A nice mix of trail towns, rural areas, and historical sites
• Worst Features: Heading east, it's mostly uphill. 
• Wildlife spotted:  Numerous deer
• Vegetation: Hardwoods, wild flowers
• Associated Website:Great Allegheny Passage (gaptrail.org)
• Primary Author:  James

After leaving Pittsburgh, we drove to West Newton, where we had a room reserved at the Bright Morning Bed and Breakfast. This is a terrific place to stay with the trail running directly in front of the house, and several restaurants in walking distance. One nice feature of the GAP is that is passes through many towns and several of these towns have embraced the trail and its riders. If all segments of the trail had been open, it would be possible to ride 30-40 miles a day and have lodging and restaurants nicely spaces along the route. We met families at Bright Morning doing just that, though they were needing to use a shuttle service to get past the closed section further down the trail. The GAP is probably the most bike-tour friendly long trail we've ever ridden. Good public infrastructure mixed with private businesses catering to riders is a combination that's hard to beat. 

We very nearly made use of these shuttle services to tackle the full trail without backtracking, but the forecast for the week was pretty ominous, with a high possibility of cold rain and even snow on Wednesday and Thursday. We decided to stay flexible and just get in what riding we could. We'll talk about the Wednesday ride in the next post. 

Monday evening, after getting checked in, we hit the trail heading west, toward Pittsburgh. We'd skipped over some large towns just outside of Pittsburg like Homestead and McKeesport, and we knew we wouldn't reach them but we thought we'd see how far we could get in the last hour of daylight. We made it to Buena Vista, about 6 miles away. This was a great ride. The noise and traffic of the big city were forgotten as we biked through small villages built to house miners and millworkers. The towns have seen better days, but we passed ballfields full of kids and an American Legion Hall with a full parking lot. The night was beautiful as the full moon rose to light our last few miles of riding. It's hard to top a ride like this. 

This waterfall is actually contaminated water from a flooded mine. It's easy to feel sentimental when biking a rail trail, but it's good to be reminded that a lot of the industries that drove the creation of these rail lines were poisoning the environment. 

On the other hand, the environment seems to be hanging in there. 

Tuesday, we took advantage of the breakfast at Bright Morning then hit the trail heading toward Connellsville. While there are small towns between West Newton and Connellsville, none of them have trail adjacent shops or facilities, so make sure you have all the water and any snacks you need for the 25 mile ride. For experienced bike riders, 25 miles isn't an intimidating distance, but the ride was a bit tougher than we expected because it's a mild but unbroken uphill grade for nearly the entire distance. It's a grade you would barely notice over two or three miles. Just know that the combination of crushed surface and mild grade means you won't coast at all. 

Fortunately, you'll have numerous excuses to take breaks. There's plenty of history and art along the way to take in. Especially as you near Connellsville, you'll start noticing strange structures adjacent to the trail. These are the remnants of thousands of ovens, where coal was baked to transform it into coke, a hotter burning fuel used in iron mills. But, if you miss the signs explaining this, the conical coke ovens give the landscape a fantasy feel, like you're riding through the former home of gnomes. 

There are several restaurants you can reach from the trail in Connellsville, but we couldn't resist eating at the Kickstand Kitchen. The food was great, and they obviously enjoy serving the multitudes of riders passing through town. 

After lunch, it was time to head back to West Newton. The plot twist you likely saw coming is that, after 25 miles of uphill, the return trip is 25 miles of downhill! It's not enough of a grade that you can just coast all the way, but instead of covering miles in ten minutes we had a lot of six-minute miles. 

If you only had a single day to ride a section of the gap, West Newton to Connellsville would be a good candidate for that ride. But is there a better section to tackle? Coming up: Connellsville to Ohiopyle!