I hiked this windward Oahu ridge with some friends the past three weekends. It's not very long nor perilous but it is something few folks have hiked. Along for our most recent trek were my brother Alika Turner, Steve Poor, and Scott Villiger. We met at Woodridge park (adjacent to the intersection of Hui Io Street and Alawiki Street) in Ahuimanu (or, more familiarly, Kahaluu) and followed a not-oft-used trail at the end of Hui Io.
There is a narrow hole in a fence to get thru and then the trail becomes more pronounced, at least for a short distance. It seems to me that this more-pronounced trail, because of its width and beaten down demeanor, was made by and for dirt bikes and/or quads but we saw nor heard no sign of these while we hiked. Eventually, the dirtbike/quad trail veered off the ridge and down into Ahuimanu Valley (to the right of the ridge we were on) and we did not follow it and instead opted to stick to the ridge, the trail along which became more of a non-trail at times.
This meant trail work for us, so out came our cutting tools, my being a jumbo pair of Fiskars loppers, which are well able to sever some decent-sized strawberry guava limbs that were in abundance on our route of the day.
Along the way as we hiked and worked on opening the trail, we had some good views of Ahuimanu Valley to our right and of the teeth of Kalahaku, a couple of which I had visited with Dr. Gene Robinson some eons ago (circa 1998) and which have been visited up close by Kenji Saito and friends in 2014 and previous to that by another group, which included a hiker who called the negotiation of the teeth and the ridge beyond it as "the most dangerous hike I have ever done to date."
And while I would not characterize the hike we did as "the most dangerous" I've ever done, there was one part of it that requires more focus and care, that being the last several yards prior to a large near-vertical rockface which we designated as our we-will-go-no-further point.
As far as I know, no one has climbed this ridge beyond the point where we stopped, but I do know that Pete Clines, in 2010, ascended an adjacent spur that intersected with our ridge higher up. He eventually pushed his way through to the Koolau summit ridge and exited via the Aiea Ridge trail.
We were nowhere near ambitious on this day and instead we turned our attention to a trail we had carved out and marked out down into the valley to the left. This is the same valley where the Ahuimanu Trail is. I led a Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club hike of the Ahuimanu Trail in November 2017.
The plan is to use part of the ridge route we hiked today along with the new valley section as an addition to the club's Ahuimanu trail route. I have already made that proposal to the club and am awaiting its thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
