Kalauao's hidden treasures
| • | Gaspar, Sandblom top Dillingham seeds |
| • | Wakeboarders sought for meet |
| • | The racing report |
| • | Sports notices |
By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Kalauao Trail teaches hikers an important lesson: Never judge a trail within the first 10 minutes.
Mud and hanging limbs only add to the variety of the hike. Catherine E. Toth • The Honolulu Advertiser
The trail, which veers off the well-trod 'Aiea Loop Trial, starts off innocently, a quiet garden path through Sydney blue gum and strawberry guava trees, with birds chirping sweetly from the branches bowing ever-so gently.
The Kalauao Trail, while not easy to follow at times, comes with a spectacular payoff at the end: A rewarding dip in a pool fed by a waterfall.
Then the trail opens up with a clear view of the Wai'anae Range, tangled in power lines streaming into the valley, before leading you back into the wilderness. Overhead branches create a canopy, shielding you from the irrepressible sun, as you weave through a path that looks straight out of a role-playing game.
You hear movement, leaves rustling, the skies are growing darker. Suddenly, two ogres wielding axes jump out from behind the trees. You use magic to destroy them. Loot the corpses, gain experience points, move on.
This isn't a hike yet, not when you're grossly engaged in conversations about getting massages and growing avocado trees. "Knees are a funny thing," one hiker observed, looking down at her exposed joints. That was the topic of conversation for five crucial minutes, when we should have been paying attention to the trail.
We learned that the hard way.
Tricky trail to follow
The trail turns and switches back, leads up, goes down and back around. It's easy to lose track of where you're going and how far you've already gone.
Catherine E. Toth • The Honolulu Advertiser
We were supposed to be looking for a huge mango tree on the right, after groves of ironwood and eucalyptus trees. Instead, we kept going, wandering so far down the trail we ended up in the backyard of someone's subdivision, complete with minivans and SUVs.
Mud and hanging limbs only add to the variety of the hike.
"The trail has to be here," said one frantic hiker, searching what looked like steep trails down the side of the mountain in the general direction of our destination: a waterfall and swimming hole.
While some attempted to blaze their own trails, the others analyzed the map and trail description, pondering over what the author meant by "junction" and "eroded spot." After some debate, we decided to backtrack past the hanging tire swing and an open clearing which we almost mistook for the junction in question.
Finally, we found the mango tree, marked with several plastic ribbons and an empty 20-ounce water bottle jammed in its branches.
Fantasy-like atmosphere
From there, the trail descends sharply into a grove of mountain apple trees. Overhanging tree limbs and pockets of sloshy mud turn the trail into a playground, a scene straight out of "Lord of the Rings." We ducked under and hopped over branches jutting in every direction, covered with mushrooms and moss. Thin strands of hot pink blossoms lined the trail, adding to the surreal experience of being in a setting much more disorderly than you'd expect.
Plenty of stream crossings
Catherine E. Toth • The Honolulu Advertiser
Off in the distance you can hear Kalauao Stream, twisting around rocks and moving so quickly you find yourself trying to catch up to it.
Mud and hanging limbs only add to the variety of the hike.
It's a stream you will undoubtedly become familiar with; you cross it eight times. Bank to bank, aiming at the multicolored ribbons attached to tree limbs and branches in scavenger-hunt form, you make your way to the prize: an inviting waterfall cascading into a swimming hole, its arms wide open, calling you in. Banyan and mango trees surrounding the pool only added to its friendliness.
The water was skin-tingling cold but refreshing, just enough of a jolt to get us motivated for the hike back.
That playground turned into a jungle gym, a Stairmaster, that nagging to-do list — everything we didn't want to face but had to. It was unavoidable. We had to go back the way we came.
And through the panting, the bruises, the sweat dripping down our foreheads, we had nothing to complain about. We had seen nature at its most eclectic. And that was worth the trouble.
