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Down Haleakala on 1.26 Million Foot Pounds Stored Energy

footloose

footloose

10 kW
Joined
Mar 29, 2013
Messages
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Location
Venice, FL
Greetings friends,

I'm a lucky guy, I'm in Maui and meeting 3 friends tomorrow to ride down Haleakala (the big volcano) from ~6,000 feet to a bit above sea level.

Riding the way I like it best: there are pedals on the bike, but only for emergency use. I did this ride about 10 years ago, and if memory serves... there is little or no uphill once you launch.

So anyway, I was thinking about the energy involved. Figure the bike and I are the "battery". Together, our mass is 210 pounds. That 210 pounds is hauled up to 6000 feet before "launch". If my arithmetic is right (this is simple enough that I hesitate to use the word math)... that is 210 pounds x 6000 feet elevation gain... for a total stored energy potential between us of 1,260,000 foot-pounds! Jeez, with that much stored potential energy I'm worried I might just explode if I hit a bump. :lol:

WIll check in tomorrow after burning off those foot-pounds.
 
footloose said:
... for a total stored energy potential between us of 1,260,000 foot-pounds! Jeez, with that much stored potential energy I'm worried I might just explode if I hit a bump.
Click to expand...
If it worries you, you could just think of it as 0.64 horsepower hour.
 
Sounds fun. I grew up on gravity racing. Our course was 10 miles, and went from about 8000 ft to 4000. Not at big as yours, but it's ride profile is nearly identical to Alp d Huez. We'd beat all cars, and many motorcyles down it. A truck would shuttle us back up for multiple runs.
 
Maui is a fun place, best windsurfing spot I've been to. I miss the wave sailing. Hiking around at the top is fun, if you have the time. Iao valley is another good hiking area. Great place to get your scuba certification, or just snorkel.
 
-dg said:
... just think of it as 0.64 horsepower hour.
Click to expand...
That conversion sure burst my megalomaniac conviction of enormous stored power on tap :)
Thanks for bringing me back to reality.

Beautiful ride. 6500 feet elevation loss in 23 miles, roughly 5% downhill average.
Couple mild/short uphill stretches, all the rest was like the old Irish blessing:
"May the road fall away before you."

Nice Kona bikes. Have never been much of a fan of using disc brakes on bikes...
just seems like overkill in most situations.. but hydraulic discs were just the ticket on this ride.
For grins, spit on one of the rotors at a stop after steep downhill stretch... some serious sizzle.
(Probably worst thing to do to a rotor, but didn't seem to warp it or anything, rode
fine afterwards.) Who knows, my next bike may have a set of discs, demonstrating that I can be
dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But probably not. The curmudgeon in
me is likely to prevail, confident that the biking gods never intended us to be absolutely certain
we could stop in time to avoid _________
 
sk8norcal -- thanks for posting the videos! I would not have thought it possible to ride a board
down that hill, but clearly I'm wrong... that rider made it look easy, and while managing
a camera the whole time. Pretty amazing. It was a bit scary on bike with
excellent brakes. But on a board? Wow.
 
Going Down from the crater to Paia town has a few small uphill sections near Makawao. I would not do that downhill without hyd-disc brakes, a full face helmet and if you are over 200lbs, dual torque bars on the front forks! Also if you want to do a dawn ride you will share the road with all the grannies that signed up for the many tour companies that bring large groups down that hill each morning. Tip: the chasers for these groups do not like to allow anyone (cars or bicycles) to pass their groups for safety reasons, so they pull the whole train over periodically to let people pass them. Most of these guys (chasers) are driving large vans with trailers, so they can prevent you from passing their group at will. I would recommend Omapio road from lower kula as an alternative route once you get down the crater and onto Kula highway. You would travel south on Kula Hwy to Omapio instead of north to makawao town.
 
RoadWrinkle -- thx for advice. First trip was so much fun I'm thinking of doing it again.
Rented bikes from bikemaui(dot)com (Haleakala Bike Company) in Haiku, and did the ride later morning
once most of the dawn riders were off the mountain.
Nice thing, they would just rent the bikes to us, shuttle us up, then let us ride down on our own
so at our own pace.

On second thought, I'm not going to do the ride again this soon. One great ride was perfect.
Why be greedy? And as I recall, last time I did a major downhill, had a great run, and
did say "I'm doing that again right now!"... I ended up with laundry list of broken body parts,
and a month in a hardshell body brace as a result. That was in Colorado, ski lift with bike, ride
back down. First run that day was terrific... second, not quite.
 
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