Kuliouou, Kuliouou West

Some deranged person posted some fairy-tale, knights-of-the-roundtable
write-up the other day using my name.  Let it be known that I have
discovered and dealt with the culprit swiftly and surely, and he's now in
custody at the funny farm in Kaneohe.

Okay, enuff said about that.

Tomorrow's HTMC hike is Puu o Kona, which the club has often done via a
middle ridge that starts at the end of Papahehi Place in Kuliouou Valley.
As Jay has mentioned recently on OHE, the Papahehi access is now no more
because the owner of the lot where the trailhead was has decided to
build.

Wing, as he's mentioned on the list, has opened up a new route from the
end of Kalaau Place (state trailhead) up to the crest of the middle ridge
in response to the Papahehi trailhead loss.  Today, a handful of us went
back to Kuliouou to do additional work on Wing's trail and we later went
further mauka to open up a contour route from the middle ridge over to
Kuliouou's west ridge.

In contrast to the rainy weather we had on Oahu yesterday, today was a
scorcher.  It was actually a great day for the beach, and when I drove
home after the hike I saw tons of people at Sandy Beach and Makapuu who'd
agree with me.

Showing up today were Jay, John, Gordon, Peter, Evelia, and I.  John will
be working with Ken Suzuki to coordinate tomorrow's hike.  The rest of us
showed up today to lend moral support, to do some work, and to get some
exercise.

We did some rerouting of Wing's trail right away to avoid being in view of
the last house on the left at the end of Kalaau.  The route begins on an
obvious trail on the left about 15 yards from the chain across the road.
After that, it's follow-the-ribbon time through haole koa and then makai
along the bank of a dry, branch-choked Kuliouou Stream.

The trail then crosses the streambed, then climbs steadily thru haole koa,
rocks, scattered cacti, and smidgens of other dryland type brush on the
down-valley side of a spur ridge.  Wing did a nice job of establishing a
line and putting up ribbons.  Today, we did additional chopping and
tossing aside of rocks and dead branches.

About halfway up is a small patch of Formosan koa where we cut a small
trail to the right for a place to sit, rest, and check out the views.
Above the FK patch, the trail stays directly on the crest of the spur
ridge where there is direct exposure to the sun and better exposure to
breezes cascading down the valley. We put in 2.5 hours of work on Wing's
trail on the way up and some additional touch-up work on the way back
down in the afternoon.

Once we cleared to the middle ridge's crest, we headed mauka for five
minutes to an ironwood grove to rest and eat  lunch.  Evelia and Peter had
pushed ahead and we wouldn't see them until later in the afternoon.  So
that left John, Jay, Gordon, and I to eat lunch together. We found
a nice spot alongside the trail that was shaped like a comfortable sofa,
only this one was cushioned by ironwood needles.  Nice breeze, nice
shade, nice lunch.

After lunch, we continued mauka up the middle ridge, passing thru another
larger ironwood grove.  Gordon decided to hang out there and take a nap
while John, Jay, and I continued on up.  Jay wanted to do some clearing
and marking of a contour trail on the left that dropped into the narrow
valley between the middle ridge and Kuliouou's west ridge.  For lack of a
better name, I'll call it Kuliouou Iki (Little Kuliouou).  The contour
trail into Kuliouou Iki is about five minutes upridge of the large
ironwood grove where Gordon stopped to nap.  It's quite a good trail
obviously man-made, cleared fairly well, and descends very gently over
the course of about 250 meters.  It then crosses a streambed and there is
a  steep trail thru guava that climbs out the other side to the crest of
Kuliouou West Ridge.

With such a gentle, well-made trail into the valley, we thought the
steep trail out seemed oudd.  It'd make more sense that whoever built it
would create a similar gentle countour out of the valley's other side.
Well, with some scouting around, we found it and marked and opened it up
quite well.  This is a nice option to the steep trail out of the valley.
I should also mention that Evelia and Peter showed up during this
chopping session.  They'd headed up the west ridge to the summit and then
come back down.

After opening up the contour trail to the west ridge, we backtracked to
the middle ridge, then down to the ironwoods where we roused Gordon, then
down to Wing's trail, then back down to Kalaau.  At the trailhead, Jay and
John shared some sodas with us and we then headed home, me taking the
road around Makapuu, a route I really enjoy driving.

--dkt