Koolau summit trail Pupukea to Waikane

There's a saying that only fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
What does this have to do with the following account?  Read on and you'll
hopefully see the connection.

Nine of us took the plunge into the mud of the Oahu mountains this
weekend, hiking from Pupukea to Waikane via the Koolau Summit Trail.  We
spent two nights out, the first at the Kawailoa terminus and the second at
the Poamoho Cabin.  Participants were Ken, Ralph (co-coordinators),
Carole, June, Thea, Georgina, Dave, Justin, and I.  Carole was doing the
KST trip for the seventh (and last) time, she says.  Georgina,
just a teenager, was among a handful of first-time KST backpackers.

Day 1 was Saturday (5/26).  We rendezvoused at Kay Lynch's house in
Hakipuu then were transported over to Pupukea by Tom, Stuart, Larry, and
Kris.  Larry and Tom were able to drive us in their 4x4s all the way up
the Pupukea dirt road to the KST trailhead, saving us 3 miles and an hour
of road walking. Mahalo nui for their efforts and to Bill Gorst for
getting us access to the dirt road beyond the Boy Scout camp.

Everyone set off at their own pace, which was helped or hindered by the
loads carried.  Pack weights ranged from mid-50s (Justin, Ken, Ralph),
to the 30s (all the wahines), to mid-20s (me).  I had intended
to keep my pack under 20 lbs (food and water included) and was
disappointed when it weighed in at 26.  Hiking light is a choice I've
made after some painful experiences hefting heavy loads, including
an ascent of Mauna Loa when I lugged 3 gallons of water and a bunch of
other foolish, bulky crap.  Learn and live.

Anyway, we moved along without much trouble on day 1 since the trail was
relatively clear (due to HTMC TM efforts) and only moderately muddy--the
big mud tango coming on day 2. Significant points along the way were the
junction to the Koolau lookout (where Tom and Stuart found the old Kahuku
trail), the junction with the trail to benchmarked Pupukea summit, the
sign-marked Malaekahana trail terminus and the Laie trail terminus.

A minute after the Laie junction, I had a face-to-face encounter with a
(sick?) pig. I rounded a turn in the trail and saw what I thought was a
dead pua'a on the footpath.  Just as I was about to turn to Carole, June,
and Georgina to tell them about the deceased porker, said porker sprung
to life and commenced a stare-down.  I yelled and struck my hiking pole
on the trail in an attempt to scare off the pig, but scare it did not.
It, in fact, advanced toward me, which pigs with room to flee typically
don't do (and this pig had plenty of room to flee).  Seeing this, I
commenced a quick, hasty backpedal and ended up crashing backwards
off the trail, now defenseless against the advancing foe. The three
wahines, all a safe distance away, just giggled and cackled at my
situation.  The good news was that the pig did not attack and burrowed
into the bushes away from me.  The bad news was that I was the butt of
jokes at dinner that night.  The wahines even claimed I screamed as I
fell off the trail.  Poppycock.

Our campsite at Kawailoa was once occupied by a cabin.  Now all that
remains of the structure is a single plank and a lone post.  Tom and
Stuart had hiked up via Laie the weekend before to chop weeds around the
site, to dig a couple of holes for our lua, and to flag the trail leading
to a nearby water source.  They also cleared a good deal of the section
between Laie and the campsite.  Nice job and thanks to those two.

We were able to set up nine tents in and around the site and we also
fashioned a nice lookout on the pu'u overlooking the camp.  After dinner,
we used the lookout as a place to kick back, watch the sunset (nice), talk
story, and stay out of the wind.  Earlier, Dave had hiked across the
swampy area adjacent to our camp to climb a landing pad hilltop with a
panoramic view of the surrounding area.  Nobody else did this, probably
because of the swamp and because misty, cloudy conditions would have
hampered views.

The wind was a bit of a nuisance during the night, not only because of
the noise it created by flapping rainflys but also for the cold
it sent into our bones as we tried to sleep.  It also rained at
several points during the night but never anything hard or prolonged.

Day 2 (Sunday, 5/27) was a rough one and began around 6 a.m. Around then,
someone asked Georgina how she had slept during the night

"Horribly," she said.  "I was so cold," a statement we'd hear from her
a bunch more times during the trip.

A few others admitted to being cold and no one, in fact, professed to
sleeping well, which wasn't surprising given the nippy, damp night we'd
had.  As we ate breakfast, then broke down our tents then packed our gear,
the mood was somber and introspective.  Everyone knew we'd have a tough
string of hours ahead of us.

Dave and I were the first to pack up and depart.  Just before we hiked
around a bend in the trail and out of sight of the others, I raised my
right fist overhead, turned to whoever was looking, and bellowed,
"Poamoho!"  Bear in mind I was once a football coach, so I'll never lack
for quasi-pseudo inspirational dogma.

And then we mushed on, with mush being the operative term. We were
constantly in mud, the brown, putrid, boot-sucking kind.  Trying to avoid
mudholes on the KST is futile and those foolhardy to try it end up
expending more energy, battling impenetrable vegetation, and encountering
just more mud.  So the best tactic is to submit to it and just slosh
right on through.  By day's end, we were coated in muck from toe to
crotch.  Yum.

Though never easy, day 2 was made better by several days of trail work
done by Roger in the preceding couple of weekends and also the new
exclosure fenceline installed by Army Environmental, with an assist by
HTMC members, among others.  Good job to all.

Day 2 landmarks included the old Kahuku cabin site (about an hour
from Kawailoa), a beautiful windswept windward section overlooking upper
Kaipapau Gulch, and the Castle junction, where Dave, Thea, Justin, and I
ate lunch and rested. We saw plenty of signs of pigs but never encountered
any. About 30 minutes beyond Castle, we came upon the exclosure
fenceline, which generally follows the KST.  A corridor on both sides of
the fence has been cleared, making for unimpeded, less muddy hiking.
Partway along the fenceline we saw a quonset hut-like structure a
quarter-mile to our right (west).  We also noticed a silhouette next to
the structure.  Was it a person?  Movement confirmed it was.  We later
found out the person was actually two people who had dayhiked over from
Poamoho and the structure was used by the workers building the exclosure
fence.  An unnamed source told me in the area near the structure are
views of a stream (Helemano or Opaeula?) with waterfalls and a pool "as
large as a football field."

The southern end of the fenceline is at the junction with the Peahinaia
Trail.  The fenceline extends down Peahinaia for a distance and then
crosses a couple of drainages to form the exclosure boundary with the
fenceline along the KST.  Among the folks I was hiking with, I heard no
negative comments about the fence, and thanks to oversight from the HTMC
(including Pat, Stuart, Charlotte, and others), the fence doesn't block or
badly infringe on the summit trail corridor.

About midway between the Peahinaia junction and Poamoho, we ran into two
early-twentyish haole guys shouldering big packs. When I saw them, the
first thought that popped into mind was "Wade Johnson" (for those who
don't know about Johnson, he was a BYUH student who, with a buddy, was
backpacking on the KST in the summer of '95. The buddy was found but
Johnson never was).

The two haole guys said they'd come up Schofield, crossed north along
the KST, passed the Poamoho Cabin, and were looking
for cabins they'd heard about beyond Poamoho.  I told them where we'd
come from and that there were no cabins between Poamoho and Pupukea.
Hearing this, they then said they'd try to reach the summit of Laie by
nightfall.  It was nearing 3 p.m. and with darkness hitting in four
hours, I told them reaching the Laie summit was not possible with the
daylight remaining. This information seemed to deflate their enthusiasm,
but they thanked us nevertheless and continued on.  Strangely, no one in
our group of nine other than Dave, Thea, and I saw these backpackers, so
I'm not sure where they went after we talked to them.  I hope they're
okay.

We had heard that Grant might be hiking up Poamoho to join us for the
final night, so we were eager to find out if he had showed up.  Once at
the Poamoho summit, marked by the Cline Memorial Stone, we made the
five-minute walk down the trail to get water at the stream.  As we
approached, we noticed a large tent in the clearing by the stream.  Was
this Grant's?  If it was, he, or whoever it belonged to, wasn't around it
nor in it.  A mystery to try and figure out.

After acquiring water for the night and morrow, it was off to the Poamoho
Cabin.  On the return trip to the Cline Memorial junction, we met a couple
who belonged to the tent.  They'd been the silhouette makers we'd seen by
the quonset hut structure by the exclosure fenceline and knew about our
backpack trip. They'd even contacted one of the coordinators (Ralph?) to
inquire about the trek.  In the morning, they had set out to hike to the
KST/Castle Trail junction but ended up not  getting that far, opting
instead to explore the fenceline and the quonset hut structure in the
Peahinaia area.  Nice folks.

Getting to the 4-bunk Poamoho cabin required a muddy (what's new?)
half-mile slog south along the KST from the Cline Memorial.  Though
spartan, the cabin brought relief from the mud and weather.  The weather,
by the way, was never bad during the trip.  Though it rained briefly, we
were never poured on.  And though clouds blocked views at times, these
times were brief.  In all, the weather was very cooperative.

All nine of us spent the night in the cabin.  As one of the first
arrivers, I snagged one of the bunks, as did Thea, Dave, and June.  Yes,
I could have given my bunk to Carole or Georgina, but after a long day on
the KST, I wasn't feeling chivalrous.

What I did do, however, was congratulate Georgina for enduring the
toughest part of the KST, and with a pack that was at least 10 lbs more
than mine. No matter how much I chided her for whining about being cold,
she'll always have my respect (though she may have preferred my bunk).

But I digress.

The night passed reasonably well, with one challenge being how to make it
thru with people having to get up at various times to answer nature's
call.  I used an old mountaineer's trick:  piss in a bottle.  Yes, this
may seem gross, unsanitary, yada, yada.  But when in a high mountain bivy
suspended from a cliff 5000 feet up (or in my case, in a cabin with bodies
strewn yon and hither), doing number 1 in a bottle is much easier and
more convenient.  A few key points:  [a] make sure to get it in the
bottle; [b] make sure to cap bottle securely; [c] make sure not to
confuse this bottle with the one you use to sip water from; [d] make sure
not to do #2 in a bottle (which is gross, unsanitary, yada, yada).

Okay, let's move on.

Day 3 was the shortest, easiest, and most scenic.  Just like the morning
before, we were up around 6 a.m., having survived a night sleep noises
(read: snoring) and of dark figures going in and out to use the lua (the
lua being the nearest bush).  Breakfast prep and consumption was
followed by packing up for the final leg.  One of the least pleasant
parts of the trip was having to put on the same smelly, dirty clothes we'd
worn the days prior.  But as someone mentioned, after a couple minutes on
the trail, we wouldn't notice the dampness and stench.  Well, at least
that was the theory.

>From the cabin, almost all of the KST to the Schofield junction was on the
windward-facing side of the mountain, making for cool breezes and pretty
views.  Clouds obscured visibility in the area below Pu'u Pauao, which is
about half an hour from the cabin.  Beyond that, views and hiking were
superb, with the lush, remote massiveness of Kahana sprawled out below
us. While hiking along, many could pick out the Kahana peaks we'd
climbed with the club, including the triumvirate of Kila, Ohulehule, and
Manamana. Since we  set off early, the temps and conditions were moderate,
making for enjoyable hiking.

Moving steadily but leisurely, most completed the ~2-mile leg to the
Schofield terminus in two hours.  Following a rest there, what remained
was a final 20-minute swan song on the KST to the Waikane trail
terminus, and then a descent of Waikane itself, the latter being in fine
shape because of recent maintenance efforts by the club.

Having completed the descent of Waikane, many took the refreshing plunge
in the water flume at the bottom of the trail, and then there was a tramp
on the dirt road back to civilization. On the way down, I came upon a huge
black sow and her two keiki.  Unlike other recent encounters with pua'a,
this one was textbook, with my yell sending the porkers scampering into
the brush.

Tom, Mabel, and Grant helped with posthike transport to Hakipuu where we
left our cars.  And Charlotte dropped by with refreshments.  Relaxing and
reflecting on the trip, we hung out at Kay's front yard to enjoy
refreshments and to clean ourselves up. Among the goodies consumed
were cookies, chocolate cream pie ala Mabel, corn dogs, assorted chips,
watermelon, soft drinks, and beer.

Much thanks to Ken, Ralph, and Grant for coordinating the trip and to all
the others for logistical/people-power support.  The outing went well
because of the efforts of all these folks.

Will any of us ever do the KST trip again? I'd bet that most eventually
will, me included. After all, we saw no sign of angels anywhere we hiked.

Malama pono,

--dkt