Last week a few of the local boys were planning on showing me the Ohana trails over on the windward side of the island. It ended up raining all night so there was a change of plans to take in some stuff that is rain friendly. When ended doing some cool stuff.
We started off with a bit of street riding to hookup with Old Pali road which has been replaced with the Pali highway. We were soon climbing on the road that is on its ways to be reclaimed by mother nature. We had one interesting scramble where Pali highway crosses over the old road.
We regrouped at the Old Pali road bridge. When I say regroup I mean the guys waited for me to catch up at this spot. I felt pretty happy about the climb I was putting down but these guys had a couple gears I don’t have (yet).
I think this is my “Mommie make the bad men stop!” face.
After the old bridge we made our way up to the Pali lookout with the last challenge being getting the bikes over the locked gate. If under a certain girth you can squeeze between the gate and the rock face to get through. I just managed to squeeze through, but I had to do an an exhale 🙂
I have been to the Pali lookout quite a few times but it had always been via a car so this time felt special considering the views were well earned.
After Pali Lookout we took Pali highway down back down into Kailua where we took a series of streets over into a forest. We followed along some old dirt roads and some trails that follow along an irrigation system.
This was off the beaten path stuff and it had been sometime since of these options had been taken. There was some hike-a-biking done. There were quite a few bike hand ups and hand offs combined with some ropes along the trail to help you with the hike-a-biking. My arms were pretty pumped by the time we got we got off the trail.
The irrigation trails bought out us onto a forest road called OGR (standing for Old Government Road) and a sustained downhill. Wet clayish soil, actively raining and downhill. Yep this is what my bike with its aggressive tires that I had been hearing churning against the old pavement of much of the climbs today was ready to get to work. I zipped down that section and was able to get my first (and only) photos of the guys coming towards me.
These guys have a system and Mike texted ahead and had coffees waiting for us at a local shop when we rolled back into town. Robert, Mike and Eric were quite tour guides on this day. Rain, Mud, Hike-A-Bikes….yeah it was great day to be out on a bike!
(The photos with me in frame were provided by Mike.)