On Tuesday I biked from Brunswick MD to north of Harper's Ferry on the C&O Towpath, mainly to see the bridge damage.
First off, the resurfacing work is pretty much complete all the way up to mile 67 or so where I turned around, about 7 mile upstream from the bridge to Harpers Ferry. The good news is that the new crushed stone has made the path surface very flat. The bad news is that even though it hasn't rained in close to a week where I am in MD, many resurfaced sections were wet or even puddled - it was like biking on oatmeal for close to half the 25 mile round trip. I'm not sure whether the greasy spots were just more shaded (that seemed to be mostly the case) or just more newly worked on sections that hadn't gotten their final rolling, or if that area just got more rain/snow than we have recently.. There are also a few short zig zag detours upstream from HF where small culverts washed out or sinkholes happened. Nothing major but a few hundred feet of dirt path and a wooden bridge.
From the press photos, the damage was on the WVa side of the bridge. From the MD side on the towpath, I couldn't actually see the damage. I did walk up the steel spiral staircase. The gate at the top is locked to keep people off the bridge. I did take a picture - from that side the bridge looks fine.
Pedestrian bridge into Harper's Ferry from the Towpath side.
Given how long it took the Park Service to put up a temporary bridge for the culvert washout downstream from Brunswick, I'd be happily surprised if that bridge was repaired by the summer. As someone else pointed out, the 340 bridge does have a pedestrian walkway - that used to be the way the Appalachian Trail got over the river. I've biked it but it isn't fun - it just collects tire penetrating objects, and the rest of 340 to the park entrance has no shoulder and lots of traffic that is not happy to share with bikes. There will be shuttle services set up for getting folks between HF and the towpath, I'm sure.
Beautiful 50 degree December day.
It was a beautiful day to ride, thought by the time I got home my bike looked like it was covered in cement, as did my back, my butt and my helmet. Somewhere I have a fender I could have put on but I wasn't anticipating the muck.
Guess I have to turn the water \back on at my hose bibs when I get home.