If the mud ride on Sunday wasn’t enough, ominous clouds and rain in the back of Manoa and Palolo did little to dissuade us from riding on Monday. When I showed up at Ckucke’s and told him about the impending rain, he seemed unconcerned. Like on Sunday, I adopted an “OK, whatever – you suffer, I suffer, we all suffer” attitude and we loaded up. Root arrived and we headed up to the top of St. Louis.
The weather was fine when we arrived. The grind from the street up into the park was heinous as usual. I went all the way to the top of the park to take a picture and check out some root drops – nothing really eventful, but fun nonetheless. We headed off down mainline to hit the dirt jumps at the halfway point. It was getting dark, so seeing all the stairstep roots on the way down was difficult at speed. I nailed a few really good, but thankfully I didn’t pinchflat, since I had forgotten to load my toolkit into my gearbag in the morning. While we sessioned the jumps, it began to rain. We kept at it, even as the moistening powder dirt began to clump on our tires like panko on unfried tempura, and the exposed roots became greasy slick.
The sun was dropping toward the crown of Tantalus and we were without lights, so we headed down the taco trail with its weak berms, then climbed back up a little to the first left drop-in past the powerline pole. The rock drops glistened wet with slipperiness, but the damp earth was solid under the tires. We dropped the rock-step line toward agave, then climbed back up to the normal sortie. What would have normally been a fast downhill was painfully slow with the drag from the panko tires grinding against the fork legs and frame stays. I couldn’t hit the rock jumps past the g-out because I couldn’t carry speed even while pedaling madly. I dialed it back and just idled through everything. The rock waterfall was surprisingly grippy.
The lower section was a little drier, and there was less loose dirt, so the packing was less of a problem. At the waterbar, I went wide right and my front tire stuck in the groove. The fork bottomed and the bike went over. When I felt zero-G on the seat, I flung my legs around the handlebar and vaulted, landing with a perfect 10 on my feet. Is there a Gold Medal for bailing from an endo? The Hope levers took a little gas on the fronts of the perches and reservoirs, but nothing really bad. The rideable line to the left was intentionally missing or washed away from erosion. We dropped the rest of the trail to the bottom without encountering random poop, then spun our way back to Ckucke’s. We were so muddy that we changed out of our riding clothes before heading to Kapahulu for post-ride food.
D = 8.50 km (5.28-miles), Vavr = 11.6 km/h (7.2 mph). Vmax = 44.3 km/h (27.5 mph), T = 44-minutes
More pictures here
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