After a couple of weeks off, it was time for a good trail ride. Ckucke and Root met me at the Ditch for an exploratory ride of the trail that ran behind the Luana Hills golf course that we had been hearing so much about. We climbed Government Road and took the right to connect to the old Maunawili Valley Road course at the gate remains. What once had been a wide cut had grown in to a narrow singletrack. Here and there, the gutter and berm along the outer edge of the cut was visible through the undergrowth, but for the most part, it was well treed in with albizia and fiddlewood. The surface was firm, varying from clay to rock. It was difficult to tell if the roadway was cut all the way down to rock, of if it had been carefully cobbled over in spots. In any case, this was definitely a surface to be wary if there was any moisture present!
After descending a while, we easily found the start of the singletrack leading off the road cut where it opened up at a hau grove. The trail, marked with orange ribbons, went off to the right along another old road cut and climbed up to the top of a spur. Again descending, we arrived at a junction. We could either go straight, or turn sharply to the right. After consulting Ckucke’s iPhone for our location against Google Maps, we explored the straight option, ending up rejoining the original road and intersecting one of the cart paths on the golf course. We backtracked and took the right. All the descending we did at the start would now be paid for with interest. This was the perimeter trail. Since the front nine holes of the golf course actually extend up the side of Mt. Olomana, the trail climbed quite a bit to get above the seventh and eighth holes. These climbs were generally rideable, but were incessant. We took a break by a banyan tree and a collection of wooden fence posts.
The perimeter trail took us through myriad ecological zones as it climbed and descended along the mountainside. It was similar to riding the side loop, but extended out to multiple kilometers. There was the albizia canopy forest, open grassland, weird succulent shrub scree fields, christmasberry forest, and brassaia with lauae fern understory. We even ran across some wild “horse cane”, indicating that at one time, sugarcane was one of the many crops experimented with in the valley. A lot of the ground conditions were loose scree since the trail ran close to the mountain where most of the surface consisted of landslide runout. For the most part, there were no obvious rest points, except for one opening where the trail opened above the seventh hole. Right after this, we encountered piggy mommy and several piglets crashing through the lauae. Even with our yelling, she paid us no mind and barely broke a trot. After a last evil climb, the trail began to descend again, having passed the highest point of the golf course.
Junctioning with the Olomana hiking trail, the trail passed an abandoned 20th century pumping station and several unusual structures. There were two rounded tank-like features connected with pipes to the pump building, and a low concrete feature built into the hillside at the low point of the little valley where these were located. It appeared that at one time, some kind of opening extended into the hillside from the low structure. A cursory websearch later turned up no further information on these structures or their history.
We descended to the paved road and rode out past the guard shack (the heavy, unfriendly guard looked like the border guard from Amemiya Keita’s Hakaider). From the rumor mill there was supposedly a continuation underway that would connect the current terminus at the hiking trail to Norfolk, by contouring along the hillside behind the women’s detention center. To go in that general direction, one would have to go up the hiking trail instead of down to the street, and cross over the top of the ridgeline that separates the Maunawili and Pohakupu sides of the mountain. Coming out onto Pali Highway, we climbed up through the Olomana subdivision, then took a break at Olomana Park before climbing Kalanianaole Highway and riding into Norfolk and connecting to the Ditch and returning to the cars. After riding this once, it would be preferable to park at the fountain and start from there – that would get the road section and the rough climbs in Norfolk out of the way at the beginning of the ride.
Pictures here
D = 18.73 km (11.64-miles), Vavr = 10.1 km/h (6.3-mph), Vmax = 42.6 km/h (26.5-mph), T = 1-hour, 51-minutes (actual trail time about 4-hours)
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