Death March

It's the countdown until I leave the island, and comparing my calendar to the number of hikes I've circled in our guidebook is showing that there needs to be a culling of the field.


Per usual, I am much more optimistic about a trail when I'm reading about it in the comfort of my living room than I am when actually hiking said trail. This one was no different.


Mildly frightened by snippits in the description that said things like 'very steep', 'serious erosion' and 'socked in', I decided to instead focus on the parts that proclaimed 'magnificent views of the entire windward side' and 'a hidden crater only seen by this trail'. Yay! Sure, I have no idea what 'socked in' means, and it's kind of frightening, but on the plus side, there is coolness! I had marked this trail with a star for a 'must hike'. However, I had never actually gone, bc it is marked 'strenuous' and any day now I was going to be getting into better shape at the gym and thus be ready for it. Why this wasn't actually happening goes as follows:


Typical Weekend Day in Reality: ''We can go work out - Ooo, right after some malasadas. Oh, now I'm sleepy, I just want to lay on the beach. Oh, now I'm worn out from the sun. No Gym.''


So, with my last free weekend at hand, I decided 'screw it' and David and I packed up and went on this 7 mile hike. We started at around 11 am or noon.

Finally staggered to the car around 6 pm.

Oh yeah.

Happy faces! We must have just started.

Basically, this was a hike along the spine of a ridge to the top of the large mountain range separating Honolulu from the Windward side. Actually, for all my whining (it's funnier this way), I really enjoyed the hike to the top of the range, for the most part.

Looking back towards the car

We had a great time, ambling over the ridge. After a while, I was starting to get seasick, since we had to go up and down so much. We probably didn't gain any altitude, but climbed approximately a gagillion feet with all those steep hills. I counted on the way back. There were 17 mini-mountains to climb on the way to the top. My quads were killing me.

The scenery was pretty good, great views of Honolulu, and lots of trees and birds. Aka, the usual. David loved it, per usual, as well.

The hills are aliiive... with the sound of weeping

There was some rock climbing involved. I don't remember this being so bad on the way down, but on the way up It felt like I was about to tip off the edge of the world. On top of that, I didn't remember it at all, so I thought we were lost. PERFECT.


Monkey Girl

View back down the trail

Weirdly dead trees. They look like a giant reached down and stripped all their leaves off, pulling to the left, leaving them twisted and bare as they swept across the trail.

It's the hidden crater! Do you see it?! Don't feel bad if you don't, because I was THERE and I had to stare a this pic for a few minutes trying to figure out what it was. If you have Superman eyesight, you can see the waterfall spilling out of the lip of the crater.

Cute baby fern

Right after this, the trail got stupid steep. I could see the 'erosion' and 'steepness' coming into play. My fav parts were when the incline suddenly became devoid of all plants and was a thin layer of gravelly sand, and there was nothing between you and slippery death other than thin air. The trick is to not lose momentum. David shared this helpful fact AFTER I almost fell to a slippery death of my own.

I don't hike as fast as David, so he is almost always ahead of me. We exchange words about this at least once per hiking trip, usually. This time it was a particularly explosive conversation, because I was in the gravelly part and had gotten stuck, and was starting to slowly slip over the edge. David was TOO FAR AWAY to hear my cries for help. Somehow I miraculously made it to solid ground. I say angel intervention. Either that, or super strength fueled by my high level of adrenaline/rage as I started envisioning ways to rip David a new one if I got off the ledge. All in all, I became neither dead nor maimed, so that was good. David was appropriately chagrined, and stayed closer to me after that.

Finally at the top! Kind of nervous about the impending climb down.

It was a race against the clouds. We won! Ha ha!

Later I found out that's what 'socked in' means - covered in clouds. I would have been pretty pissed if I hiked all the way up there and couldn't see jack. I'm glad it was somewhat clear.

At the top! You can see the Windward coast stretching away to the right of me. I took this opportunity to call my sister in AR and gloat. Although, mainly I just wanted to share the moment with her. I'm still a bit bitter for her leaving me here.

PURDY This is kind of the view back. See civilization way in the background? Actually, this picture does not properly represent the insanity of the trail. I will try to recreate via Photoshop.

Still does not do it justice! Bah.

I should have taken some pictures on the way down the summit, but I was too busy grasping onto plants for dear life to bust out the camera. My two options for making it down alive became:

• Plant Anchors
• Sliding on my Butt. My shorts were never the same again.

But that's not until later. For now, top! Pretty!

There are no more pictures after this, because I am retarded and let my camera run out of batteries. Actually, it died right before we got to the top, so we warmed the battery in the sun (tip via Court - real or crap? Who knows. We got a few photos, though) and then we'd have to take picture super-fast, completely disregarding things like counting or composition. In other words, ideal conditions.

Actually, thank the sweet lord that the camera did die, because I'm pretty sure after this my face started looking like I was having an appendectomy sans anesthetic. After I got down the initial steep decline from the summit, my knees started reporting in that I am retarded, and that they will be torturing me until I had the good sense to sit down. At this point I had 3.5 miles of heavy climbing ahead of me.

It was brutal. I'm writing this 2 months after the fact, so I don't really remember exactly how the trip back went. I remember 'writing' several dark antedotes in my head for what was becoming a future post to pass the time, but not much else. I spent a lot of time starting at the ground to make sure I didn't trip.

The one thing that did stick in my head was the hostile plant life. It was seriously taking everything I had to keep going, and meanwhile, there was this thin grass with razor edges or something that was growing across 60% of the trail, and it was slowly cutting my shins to ribbons. David too. It's the Hawaiian Grass Torture.

The last 2 miles featured some silent crying, and I was seriously considering just lying down and camping in some random spot, and I would try to finish in the morning. I was moving Grandma style, and David was probably wondering if we'd make it out before dark. He tried to help me the best he could, but there's not much you can do on a trail like that. We had to sit down a few times. I don't think I've ever pushed my knees so hard. Every step was a lesson in determination. I was so tired, I stopped picking my feet up, and almost tripped off the edge countless times. Even David was exhausted. Not just healthy-tired, but completely spent. Neither of us had anything left by the time we staggered out to the car. We drove to a 7-11 and each had around a gallon of Gatorade. I'm pretty sure that after that we went comatose.

Hawaii - Work Out Before You Get Here. You want the coolness? You have to work for it, baby.

So, the last part sucked, but I would do it again in a heartbeat for the memories I get to keep long after my pain has faded.