Sunday, 30 June 2014
The days leading up to Sunday’s ride were dire with overnight heavy rains, then pretty constant rainfall from Friday night all the way through Saturday to Sunday morning. The NOAA forecast slowly changed as the week progressed from a slight chance of rain to possible morning rain to more definite morning rain. When I got up on Sunday, it really looked like a wash. Even the internet traffic cams in the Halawa area showed rainslicked highways. Still, the forecast was for good weather, and the radar images showed the arriving rain passing to the Southeast of Kahuku point, so Sunset Hills should have been spared. I was a little worried that if we went all the way out there and conditions weren’t good, we’d still feel compelled to ride in the muck since we had made the drive. I took a chance and said we were good to go.
Chris picked me up and we went out along the Windward coast. It really looked horrible with low hanging clouds and glistening roads, but as predicted, as we passed La’ie, the sky transitioned to blue, and it was all sunny and clear past the windfarm and Crawford Home. There were puddles on the road shoulder around the motocross track access road, so it did rain recently, but heading up the Pupukea road, everything looked fine. I figured it would probably be a little wetter than the last ride we did.
Ckucke and Root were already parked and gearing up. The grass area at the trailhead was completely dry, as was the beginning of the trail under the ironwoods. We climbed up the perimeter road as usual, but before reentering the ironwood trees, we saw a doubletrack to the left. Venturing down it, we found a derelict agricultural structure that although stripped and vandalized, did not appear to be very old. There was an old doubletrack leading down from the back of the building. My new M980 crankset only had a 24t granny, so I wasn’t looking forward to continuing up to Party Line or B-Tree, so when the decision was made to explore the descent off the back of the farm, I wasn’t complaining. We enjoyed the descent down onto the forest, joining onto a lower, parallel doubletrack. Turning off the doubletrack onto a right off-camber singletrack into the strawberry guava forest, we found ourselves at the rope swing. After some brief shenanigans, we continued along the contour and dropped through a muddy section to the steep drop-in immediately before Lilikoi Junction.
Following a rest break, we climbed up the doubletrack and made our way to the top of the plateau. We descended the sweeping switchbacks of Deadwood then junctioned onto Boulders. A tree reached out and grip-checked Root, ripping his jersey sleeve and throwing him to the pine needles. Through some vaguely familiar twists and turns, we made our way to the bunker without any heinous push-ups. Chris’ hydration reservoir had sprung a leak, so when he sat on the ground for a rest, ants were drawn to his Gatorade-soaked shorts, much to his displeasure.
Ckucke led us out the correct way, so we didn’t wind up down along the outer perimeter like last time. We ended up climbing up through the lower part of Monarch and Jungle back to Lilikoi Junction. Other than the mud pit above Lilikoi Junction on the way in and the short section of Jungle, the trails were dry. That was enough for one day, so we packed it up and headed back. I actually had enough energy left to attempt the climb-out, though I didn’t make it all the way up. We stopped for lunch and the circus show at Ted’s on the way home. The weather had cleared, so on the way back, there were no traces of the morning’s rain.
D = 14.6 km, Vavr = 7.3 km/h, Vmax = 28.6 km/h, T = 2-hours (total trail time about five hours), A/D = 496 m
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