{"id":84,"date":"2007-06-05T17:55:45","date_gmt":"2007-06-06T03:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/05\/02-june-2007-wailuna-mystery-hills-ride\/"},"modified":"2007-06-05T17:55:45","modified_gmt":"2007-06-06T03:55:45","slug":"02-june-2007-wailuna-mystery-hills-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/06\/05\/02-june-2007-wailuna-mystery-hills-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"02 June 2007 Wailuna mystery hills ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday was sunny and unbearably hot all over Oahu, except for Pearl City, which was\u00c2\u00a0cloudy and unbearably hot… Root and Chris were on the side due to car and baby issues (respectively), so Jeff, Sara, and I rode up\u00c2\u00a0to where Root and I had seen the little side trail a few weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Descending steeply, the trail turned right and went from the open grass to beneath tree cover.\u00c2\u00a0 With a slight downward grade, it countoured the hillside, passing\u00c2\u00a0scratchy ferns and strawberry guava.\u00c2\u00a0 A little ways in,\u00c2\u00a0the trail dropped down onto an old graded doubletrack.\u00c2\u00a0 It was overgrown and had been continually disturbed by the piggies, so it was pretty uneven.\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed to go both back uphill toward the houses, or ahead and down.\u00c2\u00a0 We followed the doubletrack in and it narrowed to singletrack width with all the overgrowth.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not unlike Bowling Pin<\/em> at Mililani.\u00c2\u00a0 Quickly, we reached a clearing at the valley bottom.\u00c2\u00a0 The way ahead was open but without an obvious, worn path.\u00c2\u00a0 There was, however, a very obvious swithcback to the left backtracking up out of the valley along the\u00c2\u00a0 opposite wall.\u00c2\u00a0 This path gently ascended to a grassy clearing, where the trail turned right around a head\u00c2\u00a0into the next little valley.\u00c2\u00a0 The trail\u00c2\u00a0rose briefly, then\u00c2\u00a0descended to the valley bottom.\u00c2\u00a0 There were some loose, pebbley sections and a lot of deadfall along the descent, but\u00c2\u00a0the course was wide and evident.<\/p>\n

There was a sharp but rideable descent at the very bottom of the valley, at which point, we went up a shortcut directly ahead, since the original switchback course further up the valley bottom appeared to be grown in.\u00c2\u00a0 The doubletrack rose at a managable grade, but the surface was uneven, loose, and riddled with obstacles, so riding up was challenging.\u00c2\u00a0 Breaking out into the light on the first ridge in, we could see the Wailuna ridge water tank – we had found the way to the mystery hills!\u00c2\u00a0 For years we had seen this area from the other side, but\u00c2\u00a0didn’t know how to get\u00c2\u00a0over.<\/p>\n

From\u00c2\u00a0this point onward, the\u00c2\u00a0ground was much more stable.\u00c2\u00a0 Reaching the powerline tower, the doubletrack turned up the ridgetop and became clearer and more defined.\u00c2\u00a0 After a climb up firm, weathered red dirt -\u00c2\u00a0mostly wide and flat, occasionally narrowing to undulating singletrack – the trail turned back out makai and went briefly under tree cover.\u00c2\u00a0 The trail was a little overgrown and pig-rutted here, but was still rideable.\u00c2\u00a0 After coutouring along the grassy hillside it returned to doubletrack, then\u00c2\u00a0became hard, flat\u00c2\u00a0dirt road\u00c2\u00a0again.\u00c2\u00a0 There were bike tracks here, maybe 2 or possibly 3 bikes.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no tracks before this point, so assumedly the bikes came from the opposite direction.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Passing in and out from under tree cover, the\u00c2\u00a0trail rose gently to the ridgetop, where the doubletrack continued down the ridgetop plateau\u00c2\u00a0or hairpinned uphill.\u00c2\u00a0 We\u00c2\u00a0turned\u00c2\u00a0 uphill to investigate further. \u00c2\u00a0The eroded dirt road was rougher and more grooved here.\u00c2\u00a0 The surface was rock hard and rough, so\u00c2\u00a0if anyone had preceeded us, there were no tracks to indicate their presence.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Again the route narrowed to singletrack\u00c2\u00a0near the top, but as the trail peaked turned\u00c2\u00a0seaward onto the third ridge, there was a level bare spot.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0There were remnants of\u00c2\u00a0old fencing from when this area was\u00c2\u00a0pastureland.\u00c2\u00a0 Metal pickets\u00c2\u00a0indicated\u00c2\u00a0recent use, maybe until the late ’60’s.<\/p>\n

We descended the third ridge.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The trail was distinct and worn, but was starting to get narrower.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Scratchy ferns were growing in from the fenceline on the right of\u00c2\u00a0the trail, but the left was mostly open.\u00c2\u00a0 Passing over a ferny saddle, we reached the powerline tower.\u00c2\u00a0 The trail continued\u00c2\u00a0further, but then dropped unrideably steeply down into the valley between this ridge and the next one.\u00c2\u00a0 It looked like there were at least two more ridges to go to Waimano\u00c2\u00a0ridge.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Backtracking to the bald spot, I inspected conditions beyond the fence through a gap.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a piggy trail, but it was unclear whether we could continue up the ridge\u00c2\u00a0on bikes.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

We began our descent of the\u00c2\u00a0second ridge.\u00c2\u00a0 I was thinking it would have been fast and untechnical like the grassy plateau at Royal Summit, or the section between the swamp gum trees and the water tank at Wailuna, but an old cast iron bathtub that was recycled into a cattle watering trough caught my eye.\u00c2\u00a0 It looked like if it were cut free\u00c2\u00a0from the strawberry guava and cleaned, it would be in usable condition.\u00c2\u00a0 Shortly after the bathtub, there was a fork in the trail that was unobservable\u00c2\u00a0on the way up.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I followed the twisty singletrack out for a bit, then it became apparent that it was leading to the downhill groove that is visible from Wailuna.\u00c2\u00a0 Singletrack downhill sounded more appealing than gentle dirt road, so the mold was cast!\u00c2\u00a0 Other than a drop-in yumpy g-out\u00c2\u00a0into a turn<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0at the beginning, it was a simple wheel-groove downhill.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh well…<\/p>\n

At the bottom, we found ourselves T-ing into the trail on the second ridge at the tree cover before the bike tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps the tracks came from someone who had ridden groove like we did and rode up and out.\u00c2\u00a0 Returning to the ridgetop and the junction, we continued in the downhill direction.\u00c2\u00a0 The grass was grown in and obscured the doubletrack for the first few hundred\u00c2\u00a0yards, but opened up to wide, flat dirt.\u00c2\u00a0 The dirt descent took us far down the ridge, but abruptly ended in a grassy field interspersed with thickets of\u00c2\u00a0Hawaiian holly.\u00c2\u00a0 There wasn’t a visible disturbed course, but the\u00c2\u00a0front wheel found the\u00c2\u00a0path through the\u00c2\u00a0wheel-high grass back to doubletrack.<\/p>\n

The track was clear here – graded gravel road – but\u00c2\u00a0was grown in and did not appear recently\u00c2\u00a0traveled.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps we had made a wrong turn somewhere, maybe a missed turnoff before the grassy field or another\u00c2\u00a0route through it?\u00c2\u00a0 There was a defined, road-width path before me:\u00c2\u00a0I went forward.\u00c2\u00a0 Approaching a metal frame powerline tower, the road widened and became clear and recently regraded.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0We were bouyed by the realization that the end was in sight, and we probably didn’t have to backtrack – the\u00c2\u00a0gravel road\u00c2\u00a0led out somewhere<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Following the road down into the valley, we\u00c2\u00a0passed another two power towers and a concrete waterbar before climbing out to the old training\/experimental farm behind Pearl City High, where we were scrutinized by a lone, unattended, untethered, mango-eating\u00c2\u00a0tan horse.<\/p>\n

8.72-mile loop; 1 hour,\u00c2\u00a034 minutes\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday was sunny and unbearably hot all over Oahu, except for Pearl City, which was\u00c2\u00a0cloudy and unbearably hot… Root and Chris were on the side due to car and baby issues (respectively), so Jeff, Sara, and I rode up\u00c2\u00a0to where Root and I had seen the little side trail a few weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Descending steeply, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-1m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}