This hike starts somewhere near the Kolekole pass.
That's because I really don't know where we were supposed to begin! We got
lost for about the first half hour, just wandering through strawberry guava and xmas
berry, following ribbons that I insist were put there just to lead you to dead ends and
piss you off. I would say the easiest is to just walk up the rock quarry!
Eventually, you end up switching back up the quarry road.The first part of the
hike was pretty boring, but once we hit the ridgeline...it became one of my favorite
hikes! The views are incredible! Looking back towards town you can see all the
Koolaus, looking west is Pu'u Kalena and Mt Kaala, looking back from where you came you
can see Pu'u Hapapa, Kanehoa, Kaua, and Palikea!
This hike really fooled us though, I kept thinking, "Hey, we're almost
there!" But I was so far from it! We went up and down, up and down and
then way up...then way down, then way up again! I would say that this hike is
definately worth it though. The views are so nice and the ridge is really nice too!
Just when I got to the top it started to cloud up. It was really cool because
the clouds were like right above my head, making it seem like there was a roof above all
the mountains!
Back down was definately a chore, especially because we figured that we didn't come up
the correct way so let's try a different way. We ended up scaling down through the
rock quarry. Probably faster because it was steeper, but all these damn little rocks
kept getting in my shoes!
Date: October 25, 1998
Time Duration: 5 hours
Difficulty: Black
Danger: Blue/Black
Notes: Going up I kept thinking, this is a really nice short hike, but it never
seemed to end! There are so many ups and downs and some really big ones too!
Then when you turnaround and head back, you just die! Coming off Pu'u Kalena
peak all I could think of all the way back was drinking a super-sized rootbeer from
McDonalds! Seriously!! Although probably the nicest hike I've so far done,
it's definately the most brutal! My legs were so tired!
Probably if we had more time it would have been better, but we found the trail at about
11:30 and I was worried there wouldn't be enough time so we had to jam a bit.
There's some neat thin ridges at the earlier part, then some really eroded sections
towards the end. Wear long pants and gloves because the climb up Pu'u Kalena has
tons of blackberries. I tried to clear them, but there were just too much!
