A faint drizzle drifted down from the wall of dark clouds hanging above the back of Manoa valley. Unlike last week, the clouds looked settled in their pockets near the mountaintops, so it was unlikely that rain would follow us down the trail. We passed Kevyn and his white Santa Cruz finishing his day in the parking lot on the ride up. After gearing up, we headed off down the mainline. There was a little more light out since it wasn’t as overcast, so I was able to pick out my line better. Root was tardy arriving at Ckucke’s, making our start time a later than last week. To avoid riding down in the dark with only LED blinky lights, we limited our jump session to a few runs, then headed off down the hill before the light began to fade. Dropping the taco jumps then backtracking uphill to do the first left, we essentially retraced last week’s ride.
Climbing back up from agave after doing the rock drops, we ran into another group of four riders at the sortie junction. They had never been down that way, so after seeing us pointing down the trail, three of them decided to give it a try. Their fourth member arrived late and didn’t hear us yelling at him as he carved the switchback, so he missed his buddies and continued down toward the lower tank trail. Ckucke had gone ahead before the other riders showed up, so we joined him as he was examining the big boulder drop. That’s probably the most people I’ve seen up there in a while.
The descent after the g-out went much quicker than last time since the wheels could actually turn. After a brief rest at the concrete road, we headed out, reaching peak speed along the lower trail. Back at Ckucke’s, we jumped in Scat’s sled and rumbled over to Hide-chan for some good food and hospitality.
D = 7.79 km (4.84-miles), Vavr = 13.2 km/h (8.2 mph), Vmax 43.8 km/h (27.2 mph) (max speed on trail about 42 km/h (26 mph)), T = 35-minutes
More pictures here
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