West Maui Loop: Riding in Paradise

November is a great month to get out of Vancouver and enjoy a little sun. After all , for the good of your health it is worth making sure that your Vitamin D levels are at their peak before we head into our northern winter. I was planning on a trip to Maui to windsurf when I found out that a pack of riding buddies were going to be in the area for the same week. I still hadn’t unpacked my road bike from its last trip so with little planning it was soon accompanying me to the tropical isle.

The west Maui loop is about 100km long and “loops” clockwise around the west end of the island. We looped clockwise in an attempt to miss the vast majority of headwinds that accompany the consistent trade winds that make Maui so good for windsurfing. Starting in Lahaina we headed west and then north up around the island. The traffic around Lahaina, Kanapali and Kapalua is pretty ridiculous seeing that Maui is only 1880 square km with 192 km of coast. It seems that everyone that lands in Maui rents a car and then spends pretty much all of their holiday driving around the island. Thankfully the shoulders were plenty wide and after a short while we passed the vast majority of the tourist enclaves and the traffic died off.

The ride around the west side of the island is very twisty, with lots of short steep kickers. It seemed to me that we were constantly fighting a head wind but I suppose if you are only going 15 kph because of the hills it is better to fight the head wind at slow speeds rather that than the faster speeds you might attain on the flats.

Halfway around we stopped in for “the best banana bread on the planet” and to refill our water bottles. The road down to and out of this little enclave is the nastiest of the ride. One lane, lots of rock fall, and crazy drivers thinking they are in the World Rally Championships. Once back on the road we had one more long climb before we reached the north coast of the island and headed down toward the airport in Kahului with the wind now firmly starting to push us home.

Another quick fill up of water bottles was needed in Wailuku before we started the last 35 km hike back to Lahaina along the highway. The sun was out and it didn’t take long to get pretty dehydrated. The ride across the middle of the island was pretty quick. Slight downhill, 25kph tailwind. Pretty easy to pull a train at 55kph with that kind of assistance. Once back on the west side of the island we headed back north with the traffic again. It is probably about 22km of riding to get back to Lahaina. Lots of beaches to look at, but with the wind on our nose, and 75 km of riding in our legs there was quite a bit of suffering going. We eventually got back and quickly jumped in the ocean to cool off before the traditional post ride beer.

All that riding and still time to get back to the windy side of the island for an afternoon session on the water at Sprecks!