Sunday was amazingly hot. It was on the warm side all weekend, but a nearly cloudless sky allowed the sun to bring the air up to oven temperature by mid morning. Granted it was uncomfortable, but it sounded better to be outside in the wind than inside in a hot house. Just getting my gear together made me run with sweat.
Movement.
Outside.
The nearly vertical curtain of the Ko’olaus were sunlit from overhead – the deep folds of the pleated stone cast black with shadows. The vog was long gone, but the intensity of the sunlight still excited the molecules in the air to a thin blue haze. Ckucke and Scat were taking refuge from the sun when I pulled up. I knew there would be at least one, “and we are doing this why?” When Jeff, Sara, and Danny rolled in, I got it from everybody. Black doggy buddy started down the street to say, “hi,” but the heat turned him back. He lingered briefly in the shade of a Java plum tree halfway down the street, but dejectedly returned home, bouncing gingerly on the hot asphalt. Root called to say he was running late, so we retreated under the cover of the trees just inside the trailhead gate.
Hot.
Still.
I got it in my head that being under the trees was good. Climbing up to Big Tree and Concrete Block would be bad. If we went all the way up the road and did part of Demonstration trail, we would benefit from both tree cover and altitude. The higher you go, the cooler it gets. In this case, it probably wouldn’t matter much, since the difference was maybe a couple hundred meters at best, but if nothing else, the climb would put us in a better place to catch the prevailing winds. Sara started the climb, followed by Danny and Jeff. Root arrived and there was a note of hesitation in his throttle as he passed all the familiar yet abandoned vehicles. He joined us in the trees and the climb was on.
I hadn’t really done much riding during the week except for a spin on Wednesday, but my legs were just not there. I couldn’t push the midring even in the top of the cassette. I spun the granny ring up the first pitch of Government Road. Riding in Whistler taught me to let ego go sometimes and embrace the granny ring. Since we were going all the way to the top, I really did need to save my legs. We regrouped at the Mango tree. Sara really thought we were just going to do the side loop and maybe do the regular ride. There was a note of surprise, disbelief, and resistance when we continued on past. My legs had woken up by the second pitch, but I dropped into granny when the grade demanded it. We took a break at the end of the road. When we got up to go, Sara pointed her bike downhill and rode off. Jeff called out to her, but she did not want to believe that we were really daft enough to continue up the trail. She was convinced that we were joking.
I was not.
Really.
Just climbing from the gate to the end of the road took us down a couple of degrees on the thermometer. Continuing on honestly felt like a good idea. We climbed the steep pitch up to the Waimanalo contour cut. The fallen tree was still there, but a recent rockslide made a new walkaround on the already narrow, sketchy trail. Scat and Ckucke tried pulling out a tree that had fallen across the trail, but settled for just tucking it behind some other trees and getting it out of the way when the tugging and twisting were unsuccessful in dislodging it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a line as we crossed a finger ridge. It was shoulder-wide, unlike the piggy trail near the beginning of the trail. Orange ribbons! Now this was the top of the drop-in to the mystery trail along the top traverse of the side loop. Further examination would be required on the way back. Crossing the ridgetop, we went from the dry Formosa koa into the greener forest of the Maunawili side. The ground was bone dry and a cool wind blew through the understory.
Happiness.
We blew past the golf course road clearing and continued out along the winding trail. The little climbs and descents were a nice mix of effort and fun. In and out we went, passing the first two dry waterfalls and the faerie forest rock garden. The vegetation went from introduced brassaia and Java plum to lauhala to mountain apple and weird palms to melaleuca to rose apple and finally to endemic kukui and native koa when the trail took a turn for the steep and we decided to turn back. The heat was intense, and even though we had only gone in about 4.5 km, we were feeling the effects of the heat in the form of delirium. Not wanting to get full-blown heat exhaustion, we turned around and returned to the melaleuca grove for a rest in the cool wind and shade.
Blasting out backtracking, we passed a lone helmetless guy on a Trek. Not a good trail to take solo, no less without a lid. JT was playing Les Stroud, disappearing into the mountain apple grove to ninja up some fruit, and raiding the strawberry guava trees at the golf course road. Back at the new-found drop-in, I led the way down through the twiggy slide through the Christmas berry, outriggering the bike with the seat in my stomach. After the first drop, the pitch decreased to a rideable grade, but a handlebar-height branch made riding the cleared track undoable. I took a path through the lauae ferns down a groove that looked to be the original trail cut in the ancient past. Ckucke took three stabs at the first pitch, but didn’t manage to clean it. He eventually opened up his forearm on a punji stick. JT and Root decided to follow, and Jeff, Sara, and Danny went down the main trail to meet us on the side loop.
Once I stated rolling down the singletrack past the lauae ferns, there was no stopping me until I broke out into a clearing past a wall of Java plum. I heard all kinds of hooting and hollering, meaning I was definitely missing something truly entertaining. Scat had gone sliding down the ferns, but ended up going faster than his bike, so he was chased down the mountain by the bike while holding the bars with monkey grip. Ckucke nearly peed his pants. Now on a more level part of the ridgetop, we passed beside a rainbow-arc tree stump then slalomed the plum trees and trialsed the wheel-stopping roots and critical dips to come out at the uppermost point where I hiked to when I first explored the mystery trail about a year ago.
Elation.
Vindication.
Now as we were going down the trail flailing and yelling, we were in earshot of Jeff and the rest of the crew on the main trail… or so we thought. We could hear voices reacting to ours, so when we neared the junction with the side loop upper traverse and heard, “you guys alright?” we just assumed it was Jeff. “Yup.” “You guys go on ahead.” “Okay.” We dropped down the groove and waited in the clearing below. Soon someone appeared on the upper traverse and dropped in. But it wasn’t Jeff, Sara, or Danny! Three or four adults and a couple of kids went riding past. Someone else appeared and dropped in. Again, it wasn’t anyone we knew! This went on for several more people until nearly a dozen unknown people passed us. The last couple of riders asked if one of us was “Chuck”, and when we acknowledged, they said that our group was right behind them. Soon Jeff was in yelling distance and he, Sara, and Danny appeared at the traverse. Back together, we continued to the lower traverse and out.
Oddly at this point, there was little enthusiasm to continue riding! We dropped down the road to the trailhead. The ride wasn’t particularly long, but it was definitely taxing.
D = 8.75 km (5.44-miles), Vavr = 8.7 km/h (5.4 mph), Vmax = 33.5 km/h (20.8 mph), T = 59-minutes (actual trail time about 3-hours)
More pictures here.
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