Hawaii Visit - Sunday

Sunday we got up BRIGHT AND EARLY (especially for poor hostess Rebecca, who is most assurely NOT a morining person!) for a wonderful and muddy workout, hiking up to the Ko'olau summit by way of the Hawai'iloa Ridge trail.

I've hiked this trail before, about four years ago. The trailhead is at the very top of Puuikena Drive, a very ritzy gated community filled with gigantic, some beautiful, some simply ostentatious, homes. Among the many amenities located by the trailhead is this little workout thingy... I'm not really sure how it's supposed to be used, but jumping seemed like a good idea to me. When the trailchicks and I did the hike back in November 2002, my friend Nancy and I hopped over all the beams together (I'm the one in the silly green hat). This time I couldn't anyone to hop with me. Weenies.

Yes, more feet photos. This was when our shoes were all nice and clean and respectable-looking. Later on, they were just plain muddy. But we didn't take an after-photo, so you'll just have to use your imagination. =)


The weather wasn't the best - actually it was quite nice down by the ocean, but the summit was rainy and socked-in with clouds, as you can see by our little group picture. The sign is proof we made it to the top. :P


Hawai'iloa Ridge has a lot of really steep bits near the summit. Going up it's not so bad, well aside from how tiring it is. While we were at the summit, it began to rain. As we were descending the mountain, it began to rain harder. We saw little streams of muddy water flowing down the trail under our feet. In several places, we had no choice but to descend on all fours, resulting in hands that looked like this:


As we got closer to the trailhead, things did brighten up again. I really liked the shady places, especially this part of the trail, where the tree roots are all exposed and criss-cross everywhere over the forest floor. I'm no good with identifying most trees, otherwise I'd tell you what kind of trees these are...


The hike all the way up and back is probably around 5 miles. We followed up with burgers at the Shack in Hawaii Kai - the best kine food to top off a nice strenuous hike. :)

After the hike and burgers, I think Rebecca and I managed to sneak in a very short nap before heading back out for dancing at the Atherton YMCA. I thought that place was supposed to have been converted to lame office space... at least that was the rumor a couple of years ago. So I'm happy to say that hasn't been the case. :)

Atherton of course was followed up by ice cream at Bubbies, which was then followed up by some more night fishing at the "groin" with Daniel. We still only managed to catch little tiny fish. And I kept losing hooks... either getting them caught on a reef, or lines snapping on me when I cast. Bah. But we stayed out late enought that it made sense to watch the moon set... at 2:53am!