Butler-Freeport Trail Loop

I think it’s slowly becoming my goal to visit all of the longer trails around Pittsburgh before I graduate. I’ve had a lot of time to bike this summer, and most of my major rides have been focused around exploring longer trails I’d never visited. Since each trail covers a different area around Pittsburgh, it also gives me the excuse to see different parts of the region I’d have never gone to otherwise.

I have one more weekend this summer before I head back home, so I decided to check out the Butler-Freeport Community Trail, a 21-mile rail trail running between, you guessed it, Butler and Freeport north of Pittsburgh. Both ends of the trail are decently far from Pittsburgh, so I also get the chance to explore the countryside north of the city, which I’d never really ventured into before.

Getting to Butler

I left CMU around 8AM and headed north towards Millvale. I decided to bike up to Butler first, then take the trail to Freeport and head home since the route to Butler seemed hillier and I wanted to get it out of the way before my legs got too tired. The first 10 miles outside of Pittsburgh had a gentle slope along some secondary roads, never really getting above a 4% gradient. I usually have trouble finding such gentle slopes for such a long distance, so this was a really nice change of pace.

From there, I descended into a small section running through North Park, a major recreational area around Pittsburgh. There was a five-mile bike lane running through it next to the lake North Park sits on, which was a very pretty view and a nice change of pace from the car-sharing road riding I had done up to this point.

The latter half of my journey to Butler consisted of rolling hills through farmland. I’ve really come to love riding through the farms and ranches¹ you get to see throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. One of my favorite things about Pittsburgh is how easily accessible rural areas are from the urban city proper; having grown up in an area with seemingly endless suburban sprawl it’s great that I can take a day trip biking and see both a bustling downtown and the (slightly hilly) expanse of farmland surrounding it.

Some scenic farmland photos I took on the way to Butler

Getting Home

I made it up to Butler after around 40 miles, though I didn’t actually explore the city itself since the Butler-Freeport trail starts on its outskirts. The trail itself was mostly the same kind of gravel trail as the others around Pittsburgh, though it definitely bordered on becoming a double-track trail in the parts furthest away from any town. The first six miles of the trail consisted of a 2% gradient up to a trail highpoint, which felt surprisingly difficult after the rolling hills to get up to Butler. This was followed by fifteen miles of nearly constant downhill to Freeport, which gave me time to rest and speed up slightly.

After taking an extended pause in Freeport to rest and get Gatorade from a gas station (which is slowly becoming a long-ride tradition of mine), I spent a few miles on a trail extending the Butler-Freeport trail along the Allegheny river before climbing a decently sized hill to reach New Kensington.

A cool dam I found on the way back from Freeport

I had planned to take the New Kensington Bridge to Freeport Road for an incredibly flat journey back to Pittsburgh, but the bridge happened to be closed for roadwork, forcing me to continue south of the river until Oakmont. Barring a wrong turn I didn’t notice for a mile, the detour wasn’t too bad until I neared Oakmont, and was faced with a 400 foot hill with a consistent 10% gradient. While this wouldn’t have been the end of the world for me at the beginning of the ride (or for any actually good cyclist), I struggled up this hill and had to take several breaks just to get over it. I did eventually reach Oakmont and crossed to my promised flat secondary road until I reached the Highland Park Bridge, where I took one more embarrassingly slow climb up to Highland Park before I finally descended to CMU.

Even though I didn’t quite turn this ride into my third century, this ride had the greatest total elevation gain of any ride I’ve done so far (5900 feet) and I definitely felt it. I like to think I’m getting slightly better at hills though, since it took me until around halfway into the ride to notice a substantial drop in my ability to pedal hard.