The days running up to the weekend grew steadily more and more rainy. It rained hard on Thursday night through Friday morning, but the trades brought blue skies by midday. If this weather held, we would be good for a revisit to the Luana Perimeter trail, but Friday evening brought more heavy rains. In retrospect, conditions might have actually been okay, but on Saturday morning I called Chris and Root and we made the switch to the alternate venue. Ckucke was out camping; JT had a car show to attend; and Jeff, who amazingly expressed interest in riding a bike once again, bowed out at the last minute.
Wailuna was overcast when we met, but since this was a rare opportunity for Chris to get into the dirt, we were pretty much “go” whatever the weather held in store for us. The road climb was a little more painful than usual with the burn coming on early and lingering for the duration, partly from a faster pace from the smaller party and partly from a very cold start. I felt dead from the start – my legs sluggish – not on the game. Chris noted that Root wasn’t even breathing hard on the climb, unlike us. He was already undead. A drizzle began to fall before we even reached the guard shack, but we pressed on regardless. We bypassed the rest stop at the beginning of the water tank road, and went straight up to the swamp gum forest. The zombie power in my legs awakened on the first dirt pitch, but since we were going at small party speed, we kept going straight through a lot of the rest stops, hanging in a constant state of leg burn, heart redline, and oxygen debt. The rest of the climb proceeded with this intensity and pace – faster than normal with fewer stops. We did tend to take longer breaks since we were jaw-jacking so much – so much in fact that the total trail time stretched out to beyond four-hours!
Here and there along the climb, we saw tracks, but it was difficult to tell if they were from that morning or from one of the days prior. When we were breaking at the top, that uncertainty was cleared up when two riders came pushing up the Waimano ridge trail connector. They were the last two of a group, and took the turn instead of going straight over the top to Royal Summit. It didn’t really make sense to me that if they were trying to go down to Royal Summit, why they went up the ridge trail instead. After we gave them the heads-up, they went off down the correct trail and we never ran into them again or encountered their group.
We dropped the descent, making sure to not recreate JT’s “jump to nowhere” crash from last time. It was difficult, since conditions were tight and there was ample enthusiasm to ride the razor’s edge. Some of the steeper, sketchier sections were churned up by that group skidding. How unfortunate – bad for the trail, bad for us. At the end of the singletrack, we took the finger down so Chris could see the moonscape. After climbing back up through rusty nuts, we went back up the doubletrack a little so we could go down the berm line, connecting to the fenceline trail, the lower berms, and the groove. There were a couple of new lines cut in the groove, but they were not worn in and perfected yet. It was so much fun we had to go back up the road and drop the line a couple of times! Lather, rinse, repeat! While we were sessioning, resident walker dude came by with his chubby dog. I was apprehensive to do a new drop, but after chubby dog ran down it, I felt compelled to do it too. “If the dog can do it…”
Cruising down the final section to the road, we ran into Russell and his son – riding a vintage chrome Mongoose 20” – going up the dirt track. We beat a hasty retreat, flying the two rebate cuts in the park on our way back to the cars. Our attention had drifted from dirt to food, so we cleaned up, packed up, and headed to Taco Bell for high tea.
Pictures here
D = 16.74 km (10.40-miles), Vavr = 10.0 km/h (6.2-mph), Vmax = 57.5 km/h (35.7-mph), T = 1-hour, 40-minutes (actual trail time approximately 4-hours)
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