Nearby Trails
Overview
This downhill is over too soon for those who are brave/foolhardy enough to
attack it head-on. It's a nearly-straight shot with a couple slight
turns thrown in to keep you honest. There's a fence about 6 inches off your
right bar-end and a nasty crash zone about 2 feet to the left. Down the middle
is a well-trodden and eroded 6-inch-or-so swath that alternates between
irregular stair-steps and concave pits that look like foot-long divots.
It's a rough ride that will leave you feeling like you've been ballin' the
jack when you're through. Blasting down this thing on a full-suspension
bike is a rush that I've only been told about and have yet to experience; I
have a family, after all.
The Trail
From the top of Spider Alley, cross the paved road; there's a sign to the left
that points up the hill to the Japanese Hawk missile site. This is
a good place to rest and regroup; there's a great view down to the Pacific
side of the island, from Okinawa City up through Ishikawa to Kin.
Once you're ready to start out, ride in the drainage ditch until you can get back up close to the fence; about 20m. Let the mad bombers in your group go ahead of you (I usually go near last unless I've had a lot of coffee that day). Look at the trail in front of you as you go down (not at the 4-foot drop-off into the deeply eroded red clay and rocks on the left, nor at the chain-link fence 6 inches away from your right handlebar that would just love to grab your bar-end and throw you into the afore-mentioned erosion gully) since bikes have this tendency to go wherever your attention is focused. Near the bottom there's a bend to the left, still along the fence. Immediately after you cross the drainage ditch at the bottom, crank your bars around to the left to climb away from the fence. Once you start back downhill again, look to the left and you will see a sign nailed to a tree that says "Waterfight". There's a gate in the fence to the right, and the trail ahead is definitely doubletrack. Back and to the left is some overgrown singletrack that was probably cut by the bird collectors you sometimes see in the area; it goes back in along a ridge for a fair distance but dead-ends.
Waterfight
Overview
It's your choice: you can either use this section to recuperate from the the
punishment you've endured so far, or you can blast on through and just get
tired. If this were a race course then you'd be desperately trying to
pass people here. It's all wide "doubletrack" that continues
to follow the fence around the Munitions Area, although the erosion ruts tend
to limit the choice of lines down the trail. In general, keep
left. After a rain this section will really gunk up your bike unless you
ride slowly and carefully - but that's not much fun, now is it?
The Trail
It starts out as a relaxing double-dip roller coaster ride that follows a wide
trail along the fence line. The surface is mostly loose gravel, with
small-but-treacherous erosion gullies down the middle of the trail. In general
it's best to keep to the left, even if that means you'll pick up a little more
mud.
And speaking of mud, the bottom of the second dip is almost always a wide swath of the gooey stuff, with a sharp uphill right turn on the opposite side. This is another place to let your friends go first, so you can gauge how they handle the conditions. After this it's a fairly flat, sometimes undulating run until you come to a dead-end gate, turn left up the hill and follow the fence into One-Way Hills
One Way Hills
The names says it all.. pretty complicated especially when wet. It starts with a narrow patch along a fence-line, don't look to your left -- the drop-off will steal all your focus. Once on the big hill, the trail switches back a few times when you least expect it and has a few sudden surprise rises. It finishes with a nice steep drop -it's ridable if you don't stop to look at it. From there, follow the trail past the cactus field (Stay out of the field itself) to a dirt road, take a left up the road and keep bearing left until you come to the main highway. From here you can take a left to La Luge or a right to Mudrock.