{"id":371054,"date":"2026-10-12T15:32:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/371054\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T15:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:32:17","slug":"bikepacking-americas-longest-multiuse-trail-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/371054\/","title":{"rendered":"Bikepacking America’s Longest Multiuse Trail Network"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even the slightest rain<\/a> can sound thunderous inside a tent\u2014and this was not slight rain. It came down in buckets, just as my partner Maggie and I were settling into our sleeping bags. I worried whether the barely-two-person tent would withstand a deluge like this and what the protocol was should lightning strike. And then lightning struck.<\/p>\n

We talked about what to do. Maggie pulled up some information on her phone and was soon crouching on one foot, to avoid creating a circuit, she said with confidence. She counted the seconds between each flash and rumble out loud to gauge the storm\u2019s proximity to us. I was mostly thinking of just how scant our escape options were. Our only way out was our drenched bicycles<\/a>, resting against a soggy pine tree outside the tent. We took turns proposing different plans: spend the night in the campsite bathrooms, ride to the nearest motel, call the cops. We settled on hoping for the best. I fell asleep amid spiraling thoughts of dread: first night in, and this bike trip was already feeling like a mistake.<\/p>\n

I woke up to the sound of birdsong and gentle raindrops, one beckoning me out of my sleeping bag, the other making a convincing argument to burrow deeper into it. But multiday bike touring, I would come to learn by the end of a 10-day journey across New York State\u2019s Empire State Trail, is all about convincing yourself to do things you might not feel like doing\u2014ride another dozen miles to the next town because it\u2019s either that or a soulless highway motel, eat yet another granola bar because you didn\u2019t plan lunch properly, wake up early to beat the hottest hours of the day\u2014only to be thankful, eventually, that you did them.<\/p>\n

Under a canopy of drizzle, Maggie and I emerged from our tent and went about a set of tasks that would soon become routine: We boiled water on our tiny camp stove for coffee and tea, broke down our sopping tent, repacked our panniers, and triple-checked that we left nothing behind. We were exhausted\u2014a bad sign considering this was Day Two. But it was understandable, given how much we\u2019d already experienced.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

After stopping for breakfast at Rough Draft in Kingston, New York, Sebastian Modak packs his handlebar bag and prepares for a wet day on the Empire State Trail.<\/p>\n

Starting in Buffalo, we\u2019d decided to take a 65-mile pre-trip detour, cycling to Niagara Falls before looping back to start our real journey on the Empire State Trail that would take us all the way to New York City. We had already ridden through verdant farmland and industrial blight, had meandering conversations with strangers, and contended with the elements. A douchebag in a cheap sports car had almost run us off the road, but a bike shop mechanic at Campus WheelWorks in Buffalo had fixed my moody mechanical disc brakes on our way out of town and refused payment after he saw our panniers<\/a>. We were the third bike tourers who had come through that week, he told us, but the first to have chosen to go west\u2014to the falls\u2014before heading east. He seemed to like that.<\/p>\n

The morning after the storm, we caught our first glimpse of the Erie Canalway Trail, the western section of the Empire State Trail, which runs 360 miles from the shores of Lake Erie in Buffalo to the Hudson River in Albany. As far as we could see, we were the only people on this section. A finely ground gravel path, compacted by the rain, ran along the canal\u2019s edge, straight and flat. A blanket of fog cloaked the waterway in an eerie silence. We stopped for a minute to take it in. Amid the quiet, I struggled to imagine the canal as the artery of industry it once had been. It was a long way yet to New York City.<\/p>\n

\"digital<\/p>\n

On December 31, 2020, New York\u2019s then-governor Andrew Cuomo announced the completion of the Empire State Trail<\/a>, a 750-mile bike route, 75 percent of which is on car-free paths. The trail runs from Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan, up through the Hudson Valley and the Adirondacks to the border with Canada. Another section runs from Albany, all along the Erie Canal, to Buffalo. In all, it\u2019s the largest multiuse trail network in the country.<\/p>\n

While most sections existed before the establishment of the Empire State Trail, it took roughly four years\u2014and about $200 million\u2014to link them into a continuous network, a process that involved stakeholders ranging from individual municipalities to community volunteer groups, to the state\u2019s parks department. \u201c[The Empire State Trail is] easily 50 percent of my job now,\u201d says Christopher Morris, the statewide trails program planner for New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. The trail isn\u2019t overseen by a single entity; rather, it\u2019s a kind of amorphous commonwealth of invested parties, each looking after their own section in favor of this greater mission. A major part of Morris\u2019s job involves getting the word out, he says. He often gets emails from would-be travelers, from both the U.S. and abroad, looking for tips on how to navigate the trail. \u201cWhen you really see this kind of investment make a difference, it\u2019s rewarding,\u201d he says. \u201cIt makes you feel good about your job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

Modak makes one of several bridge crossings along the Empire State.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

As riders inch toward New York City, tranquil farmland gives way to bustling towns and cities.<\/p>\n


It\u2019s understandable if you missed this bit of nerdy infrastructure news when the trail system opened. December 2020 was, up until that point, the deadliest month of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Over the preceding eight months, I\u2019d holed away in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, overwhelmed by a sense that the world I\u2019d known and loved had ended. I\u2019d spent the entirety of the previous year hopping week by week from destination to destination as The 52 Places Traveler for the New York Times, so the abrupt transition to total stasis left me feeling helpless\u2014not to mention jobless. I welcomed the Empire State Trail news, which I heard about from hours of scrolling through Reddit looking for something\u2014anything\u2014to bring me out of my apartment and into the world again. Around four years earlier, I had splurged on a Trek CrossRip, a jack-of-all-trades, gravel-ish bike with an aluminum frame, after a lifetime of secondhand clunkers. Over time, I had made little upgrades\u2014a Brooks saddle<\/a>, handlebar tape that didn\u2019t bleed dye onto my palms, bombproof Schwalbe tires to withstand New York City, where the streets are paved with glass. In the darkest days of the pandemic, that bike became my ticket out.<\/p>\n

I rode whenever I could\u2014through the empty streets of the city, the usual din of life being lived replaced by the constant wail of sirens; up and down the Hudson River Greenway on Manhattan\u2019s West Side, itself part of the Empire State Trail. At around the same time I\u2019d sprung for the Trek, Maggie had bought a Specialized Dolce, an aluminum all-rounder with rim brakes and what the company calls \u201cWomen\u2019s Endurance Geometry.\u201d She also fell in love with Brooks\u2019s leather saddles and added in-line brake levers for extra safety. Together, we ventured farther afield. We followed the Empire State Trail up through the succession of rail trails in the Hudson Valley, veering off it to visit a friend in the Catskills. In the summer of 2021, I rented a car and drove my bike 275 miles up to Lake Champlain, where I explored the network\u2019s most northerly sections through the Adirondacks, where the \u201ctrail\u201d often is just a lane painted onto the side of a road\u2014some of the 25 percent that isn\u2019t car-free. I took locals\u2019 advice to deviate from the main roads onto quieter country lanes, but I also found the rumble of logging trucks and tourist campervans whizzing by me oddly comforting, for it signaled a return to some kind of normalcy.<\/p>\n

Spending so much time in transit for work has made home a moving target to me, often just out of reach and always out of focus. The bicycle, a tool invented to traverse distances efficiently, helped me see what was right in front of me.<\/p>\n

\"digital<\/p>\n

In the early months of 2023, started to sketch out a trip I hoped would feel like a culmination of all my backyard wanderings around New York. Travel has always been a shortcut to adventure to me, and, because of that, I\u2019ve often shorthanded adventure as requiring distance. I wondered if I could tap into the same thrills, all without ever stepping foot on a jet plane.<\/p>\n

After a 10-hour train ride from New York City to Buffalo, I\u2019d ride two main sections of the Empire State Trail\u2014the west-to-east Erie Canal Trailway and the chain of rail trails and backroads running south from Albany back to my Harlem apartment\u2014some 550 miles in all. Burdened by corporate vacation policies, Maggie decided she\u2019d ride the Erie Canal section to Albany with me, then hop on the train home. In the months leading up to the trip, I pored over guides and online forums, of which there are many, building out a plan that involved a mix of camping and staying at bed-and-breakfasts in the towns along the way. Veterans of the trail warned of heavily trafficked sections of road around Kingston in the Hudson Valley and of the mosquitoes that swarmed the campsites at the various lock stations of the Erie Canal. Insiders cautioned against underestimating the coma-inducing qualities of a Rochester \u201cgarbage plate,\u201d a bucketload of ground meat smothered in a fridge-tray\u2019s worth of condiments. I took fastidious notes and drew up packing lists, weighing my panniers until I got to a weight I felt comfortable with. I plotted out days on the trail that would run us an average mileage of around 60, with a few \u201crest days\u201d in the 30s baked in.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

Modak lubes his grimy chain after a wet start to the day.<\/p>\n

Seasoned bikepackers and bike tourers may find this all a little overdramatic. But having really only fallen hard for cycling in the last few years, I still don\u2019t understand many things: a bike\u2019s head-tube angle and trail; heart-rate zones and watts. But I do know travel. I know that so many of the clich\u00e9s are true: that the best travel moments often appear out of the haze of the unexpected; that the journey can mean much more than the destination; that risk almost always reaps rewards; that who you travel with is often more important than where you go; that everywhere, no matter how seemingly mundane or obscure, has a little bit of magic waiting to reveal itself, if you just let it.<\/p>\n

When it opened in 1825, the Erie Canal was the longest artificial waterway in North America and, in how it opened up the interior of the country to enterprising East Coasters, it was an embodiment of a pioneer mindset that saw a burgeoning country shape the land to its will and expand farther west. While it wouldn\u2019t take long for the railway to replace canal barges as the go-to freight hauler, the political will and sheer toil that went into the canal\u2019s construction would be a precursor to the hyper-capitalist nation emerging in the following centuries. \u201cIn time, this skinny ditch in upstate New York would demonstrate that trade and commerce are keys to the expansion of prosperity and freedom itself,\u201d writes the historian Peter L. Bernstein in his 2005 history of the canal, The Wedding of the Waters.<\/p>\n

Many of the settlements along the canal aren\u2019t thriving like they were when this was a major thoroughfare of trade. Once tracing a path between vibrant industrial hubs, the waterway now closely mirrors the contours of the Rust Belt. Just as the grandeur of Victorian mansions points to what was, so do empty streets and faded \u201cFor Rent\u201d signs on empty storefronts.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

The Empire State Trail and the Hudson Valley Rail Trail overlap for about 7 miles.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

The well-worn Brooks saddle on Modak\u2019s Trek touring bike.<\/p>\n

One such town, Brockport, is at least partially buoyed by the state university campus\u2014or so I was told by Valerie Ciciotti, who runs Park Ave B&B in a painstakingly restored 1851 mansion that we stayed in. Graduation is the busiest time, she says, but bike tourists like us are becoming more common every summer. As we rolled out of Brockport the next morning, I wondered\u2014not for the last time\u2014whether a steady influx of tired, hungry cyclists could be enough to keep towns along the canal alive. (When I caught up with Ciciotti recently, she said the trail was already making a difference\u2014the village government has become more directly involved with tourism, including designating Brockport an official Empire State Trail Town.)<\/p>\n

\"digital<\/p>\n

We spent the next week on the Erie Canal in a kind of meditative rhythm that only comes from long trips, drifting in and out of conversations with each other, keeping count of kingfishers flitting along the water, and gasping when a heron swallowed a fish whole.<\/p>\n

Outside Fairport, the skies turned black and dumped rain on us until we were laughing at the absurdity of trying to cycle through mud so dense it made our tires seize. Bystanders, wise enough to take shelter, cheered us on as we rode. We stopped under an awning and pried mud from our chains with our fingers. When the rain showed no sign of stopping, we just kept going\u2014pulled along by the promise of a hot shower and a cold beer. We rode through sheets of rain until water poured out of our shoes. Once the deluge slowed, we tied wet clothes to our bikes. We looked like sailboats rolling down the trail.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

Old train cars are scattered along the Hudson Valley Rail Trail.<\/p>\n

One night, we camped at one of the locks along the trail, where boats are lifted to account for elevation changes in the ground. (Cyclists can camp at certain locks for free but are encouraged to call the lockkeeper ahead of time as a courtesy.) As the light faded and the mosquitoes emerged, I spoke to a pair of retirees on a boat who were following the same path as so many goods-bearing barges once did\u2014from the Great Lakes to the Hudson and the sea. We woke up in the middle of the night to the infernal shrieks of nearby foxes. The following morning, we rode into Utica for breakfast at Golden\u2019s diner, itself a throwback, where one man behind a counter flipped eggs and pointed to the self-service coffee station while bebop played from tinny speakers.<\/p>\n

For our last night on the canal, we stayed in the Amsterdam Castle, which looms over the tiny town of Amsterdam like a tyrant\u2019s keep. A bizarre manifestation of some sort of Arthurian fantasy, the hotel features suits of armor in the lobby and velvet bedding in the rooms. New York State truly contains multitudes.<\/p>\n

I thought about all the many things I\u2019d seen and done in my travels to far-flung places\u2014witnessing a solar eclipse in Chile, kayaking alongside humpbacks in Antarctica, hiking through prehistoric rainforests in New Zealand. If novelty is what drives our travel decisions, it was rapidly becoming clear to me that I didn\u2019t always need to fling myself halfway around the world to find it.<\/p>\n

\"digital<\/p>\n

Because the Empire State Trail is mostly a consolidation of existing paths and an effort to fill the gaps between them\u2014and because of the vast distances the network covers\u2014the character of the trail changes the farther along it you ride. I noticed this as soon as I said goodbye to Maggie in Albany at the eastern terminus of the Erie Canal and turned south on the first of a number of rail trails that would take me back to New York City over the next three days. With the canal no longer a constant companion, I found myself instead passing through bucolic suburbs, open farmland, and, occasionally, dense sections of forest. Riding alone after days with someone else was an adjustment, too. I found, just a few hours after turning south, I was talking to myself\u2014making observations about the lack of shade and the odd, ashy taste in my mouth from forest fire smoke drifting south from Canada. It made for tough riding\u2014and I took much more frequent rest stops.<\/p>\n

If novelty is what drives our travel decisions, it was rapidly becoming clear to me that I didn\u2019t always need to fling myself halfway around the world to find it.<\/p>\n

When planning my trip, I knew I\u2019d pass through major regional hubs like Hudson and Kingston. But I also wanted to experience corners of the state I hadn\u2019t seen before, and I chose my stops for the night with that in mind. That\u2019s how I ended up veering a mile off the trail into the storybook village of Kinderhook. I checked into the luxurious Old Dutch Inn, a new hotel housed in a modernized 19th-century building with views of the village square. It had only just opened a few weeks prior. The co-owner, Jennifer Ose-MacDonald, showed no trepidation when she welcomed my mud-streaked, sweat-drenched self into her immaculate establishment, where snow-white linens hung from the windows. Knowing I was one of the first of what she hoped to be many bike-traveler guests, she asked me for advice on bike racks. I told her that though the exact model of bike rack wasn\u2019t that important, alas, a lot of cyclists might not be as comfortable locking up their bikes outside overnight as I was. (Ose-MacDonald says she has since carved out space for indoor bike storage and has added a trove of tools for cycling guests.)<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

A view from the Hudson bridge between New Paltz and Poughkeepsie, New York.<\/p>\n

Ose-Macdonald\u2019s partner, Jake Samascott, runs a much-visited orchard and farm shop in town but is also the president of the Columbia Friends of the Electric Trail, an organization of volunteers who maintain the section of trail that passes through Columbia County, mowing and trimming the greenery around the path. For years it was an unused, overgrown corridor through which power lines ran. More than a thoroughfare for bike tourists like me, the trail is a community asset, Samascott says. \u201cI have three little girls who wanted to learn to ride bikes\u2014I want them riding on a trail and not on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

I saw how these paths build community throughout my trip but especially on the rail trails that run one into another through the Hudson Valley until they end in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Travelers like me were few and far between, but I passed dozens of families out on bikes, joggers with their dogs, even summer-school groups. Several, seeing my bags, and the level of grime on my face and body, would offer a thumbs-up or shout, \u201cYou\u2019re almost there,\u201d though they didn\u2019t know where I was going.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

Riding into Fort Washington Park on the Hudson River Greenway Bridge at the top of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

\"cyclingBryan Banducci<\/p>\n

The Empire State Trail is mostly a consolidation of existing paths, a reason various trails overlap.<\/p>\n

New York State isn\u2019t all smooth-rolling. Idyllic sections of tree-shaded gravel paths on rail trails are broken up by hilly roads and, at one point around Kingston, a traffic-snarled bridge. Unlike the Erie Canal section, campsites along the Albany-NYC axis of the trail are largely nonexistent, which means budgeting for hotels, and that can be pricey, especially during the summer high season. The penultimate stretch of trail, leading to the town of Brewster, inches steadily uphill for at least 15 miles, which, after more than a week of long days, felt like I was conquering the Dolomites. Arriving in Brewster\u2014still about 50 miles from the northern edge of New York City\u2014I found none of the charming, independent B&Bs or idyllic campsites I had depended so much on during my trip. I could have opted to make a break for it and ride a century straight from the Poughkeepsie area to the city on my last day, but I didn\u2019t have it in me. I bought a gas-station beer the size of my head, checked into a soulless Comfort Inn, and ordered a pizza.<\/p>\n

\"digital<\/p>\n

Over the course of the whole trip, 11 days in all, I thought often about infrastructure and movement; about how much effort has gone into inventing new ways to travel, ever faster, ever cheaper, ever more efficient. By the time the Erie Canal was completed, the railroad was already ascendant. On large sections of the Hudson Valley\u2019s various rail trails, the rusted remains of iron rails sit, fossilized and inert. Alongside them, on the very beds of dirt where they once ran, the gravel is crisscrossed with bike-tire tracks and packed down with the footprints of millions of pedestrians.<\/p>\n

I stopped often, to stretch, to photograph, to think. As it does when traveling on your own power, every mile felt like an achievement, no matter how repetitive and, at moments, no matter how difficult the actions were. Even while choking on smoke, with my legs burning and my bike making new and unfamiliar sounds (brake rub, it turned out), I found myself drawn onward by a sense of discovery\u2014the feeling that I was getting a more solid picture of a concept that has eluded me for most of my life: home.<\/p>\n

The closer I got to New York City, the more anything resembling silence was replaced with the constant whir of nearby interstates. Planes rumbled overhead. How much faster can we possibly go? What comes next in our constant hunt for peak efficiency? And what will we do with all that extra free time, anyway? The bike and all the places it can take me beckon.<\/p>\n

\"digitalSebastian\u2019s Must-Have Gear\"bicycle<\/p>\n

Trevor Raab<\/p>\n

Sebastian\u2019s Must-Have Gear\"aOpen Gallery\"\"\"Lettermark\"<\/p>\n

Sebastian Modak is a writer, editor, and photographer based in New York City. He spent 2019 circling the globe as the New York Times 52 Places Traveler, reporting from every destination on the Times\u2019 52 Places to Go list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even the slightest rain can sound thunderous inside a tent\u2014and this was not slight rain. It came down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69840,1220,101290,9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-371054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bikepacking","tag-core","tag-empire-state-trail","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}