Originally Posted by
jpescatore
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.
Good to know. I haven't been north of Brunswick since May. I remember just north of HF being dirt like with a lot of ruts. I don't remember the details of the surface between HF and Brunswick but it was different. I do ride the southern section a lot. They did a 5 mile section from Whites Ferry south with the crushed stone liek you described this year too. It was done in phases over a few months. It ended up settling out to a decent surface but for a while it was like oatmeal and loose. Eventually the excess fines bed in or wash off and and the slurry subsides, at least it did there. I prefer the random packed larger gravel over the new crushed they are doing but that's me.