Death in the Morning

Chris wrapped up his family vacation with a trail ride out at the Ditch with the gang. Kevyn was there when I arrived, but the parking area was rather full, so I parked up the street a bit, by the Grosser sidecut. Taro arrived and took the last normal parking space below the gate. There was some dude we didn’t know parked above the gate getting his bike prepped. As Ckucke and JT came up the street, JT saw Root and assumed everyone present was our group. He waved at Root and Kevyn, and thinking the third person was Chris, flipped him off! With shock and embarrassment, he realized it wasn’t the case. After Ckucke parked above me, JT walked down the street to apologize to the guy and explain. The guy was cool about it. Chris arrived, and with the group complete, we headed up the trail.

We climbed up to the end of Government Road. The conditions were good, slightly damp and reasonably free of deadfall, except for one big tree on the straightaway. The tree nearly completely blocked the road, but there was enough space for legitimate trail users to get by. I expect that it will remain there until some illegal 4×4 comes by. While we were taking a food break at the top, the mystery dude and his friend came by. They were cordial and asked about the trail system. After seeing Chris, he noted that he and Chris looked nothing alike. I think his observation was that everyone except Chris was Asian and assumed JT made the misidentification just on the basis of race. Both he and Chris were tall and thin and wearing predominantly black – I can see how JT made the mistake, especially since the guy’s back was turned to the street. The two gave us an abridged Marine salute and politely went off up the Demon trail.

We went up Demon trail as far as the Drop-in of Death and descended to the side loop. Ckucke came in too fast on his first run and was unable to scrub speed, ending up going wide and endoing into the left bushes at the bottom of the first pitch. He scraped up his forearms pretty badly, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade him from going up and making another run at it. His second run was also a little on the fast side, and he ended up making it past the first pitch, but spinning into the ‘uluhe and trees just below it. JT washed out on his first run, but succeeded on his second, using his secret ninja ABS-finger technique. Chris made it down the first pitch, albeit a little fast and frantic.

After completing the side loop, we went out along the Ditch. Ckucke had heard about a bermy downhill trail on the Norfolk side from a dude at the Kailua Bike Shop, so we went up cardiac hill to the upper side to search for it. We weren’t really sure where it was, and weren’t fully familiar with all the doubletrack in the area. We found a nice sinuous singletrack somewhere above the jump track area, then climbed a bunch of roads blindly. We basically followed bike-wide tracks with signs of recent clearing or use. On one pitch, we spotted some side trail off in the brassaia and Christnas berry. Ckucke and Chris investigated and found rock drops and berms like the Bike Shop dude mentioned. It was a bit disused looking, with a lot of leaves and deadfall though, but since we were coming off the end of winter, it probably hadn’t been used much for the past few months. Assuming the top of the trail was somewhere up the doubletrack, we kept climbing until we reached the base of Mount Olomana and the road went off in a different direction. We backtracked down and tried a few side trails to no avail. We ended up returning to the trail and actually pushing up it to find the entrance. JT had gone up the side trail that accessed this entrance, but didn’t see it amongst the undergrowth.

We dropped the line. It was rough and not particularly flowy. The boulder-overs were filled in with rocks on the approach and departure sides, so they weren’t deadly. The general trail surface was too rough to attempt jumps or hard corners into the berms though. At the end, we dumped back out onto the familiar doubletrack, and continued downhill along some singletrack sideline to the jump track. Backtracking up, we worked our way back to the secret singletrack and returned to the Jacaranda tree to drop Fat Guy to the Ditch. The return run was fast and smooth. I wanted to do the mystery inner trail and the inner loop, but everyone else was pretty burnt and time was getting late. I was running on empty, since I only had one bar and two gels, the last at least an hour before, but for some reason still felt the “go” and wasn’t feeling any significant burn or lag. Maybe it was the Celebrator Doppel-Bock I had on Friday evening giving me secret goat powers. Whatever the cause, Chris and I kept it in high gear all the way out.