New hikes: Kolowalu and Puu Pia Trails in Manoa

-
Caroline about half way up the Kolowalu Trail in Manoa.

I admit that I'm a creature of habit.  While Caroline has walked or run on every street in upper Manoa, I have my 1-3 routes, usually ending up on the Manoa Falls Trail, one of the most popular and accessible trails on Oahu.  When running to the falls (about a 7 mile run), we like to leave about 8 AM so that we don't have to dodge around many hikers.
Running down the Manoa Falls Trail is easier than running up!

Yesterday, we were considering an early evening run, so Caroline suggested that we take a hike on a couple of trails that we always pass and had never hiked, the Kolowalu Trail and the Puu Pia Trail.  Both of these trails are "short" (between 1-1.5 miles to the end) but they are STEEP!  With an eye on the weather (we anticipated rain), we took our hydration packs, snacks, and walking sticks and started up the Kolowalu Trail first, supposedly the steepest of the 2 trails (1100 feet elevation change over 1 mile).  With the white-rumped shama egging us on, we climbed over rocks and tree roots and went up, and up, until we reached the ridge where the trail meets another coming over from Palolo Valley (Wa‘ahila Ridge). I was spooked by the rainclouds coming in, so we didn't linger at the top, and headed back down.  We saw 4 other people on this hike, so the trail is not crowded.
Some sections of the trail were "Are you kidding me?" steep.

Which side of this tree looks the safest to pass?

The top of the maintained trail at Wa‘ahila Ridge... but you can keep going to Mt. Olympus.

After we returned to the trailhead, we could immediately start on the Puu Pia Trail (400 feet elevation change). Again, there were some very steep sections, and the rain actually hit us this time when we got to the top.  That made the descent slower as you tried to navigate the least muddy, yet stable, footing.





Upper Manoa to the left, and Lyon Arboretum to the right, in the rain.


I may be soaking wet, but, hey, it's Hawaii!


Puu Pia Trail.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Voyager of The Seas: giving guests a reason never to cruise again

-
Image
  A "veggie burger" in the Windjammer buffet.  If I wanted mashed potatoes, I'd choose mashed potatoes. After spending a month on the Anthem of the Seas , I was looking forward to a trip on a different ship. And this trip was going to include the entire family, some of whom had never cruised before, so I was looking forward to them being impressed with a week on the Voyager of the Seas. Voyager is a smaller ship than Anthem , so I knew in advance there were some missing amenities. Still, they were all part of the Royal Caribbean corporate ecosystem, so the overlapping elements, like the quality of the food and service or the accuracy of the "Cruise Compass" (a digital or paper calendar detailing everything there is to see and do onboard, from dining times to the location of trivia contests to where all the many musicians are playing) should be similar. It wasn't. The week we returned home, we canceled our future transatlantic cruise on the  Voyager. We neve...
Read more

The one, the only... Chobe National Park, Botswana!

-
Image
We were on our way to the famous Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana.  This visit was somewhat troubling for me.  In May, Botswana's president had announced an  end  to a five year ban on elephant hunting.  Elephant hunting?  There were calls for a boycott against Botswana.  Botswana is a bright spot for African savannah elephants, with over 100,000 in the country.  The proposal was to permit around 400 elephants to be killed by trophy hunters, who presumably would pay $30-50 thousand dollars to kill each of these animals (at $40,000 each, that would come out to $16 million).  There's roughly an equal number of elephants being poached for their ivory each year in Botswana.   I'm going to editorialize on hunting elephants for a moment.  Just scroll down to the white rhino photo below to skip my ramblings. But the overall populations of both forest and savannah elephants in Africa are in steep decline (espe...
Read more

The Tale of the Maui Mystery Cat

-
Image
In 2003, a jaguar was suspected of terrorizing residents of the Olinda area, Maui. Photo of a jaguar attacking a cayman in the Pantanal, Brazil, by Frank Schoen. Copyright: https://www.123rf.com/profile_djambi1969 . Used with permission.      In 2003, I was sitting in a Starbucks across from the Honolulu Zoo in Waikiki, reading the Honolulu Advertiser , when I came across an article about the sighting of a large, cat-like creature on Maui. I don't have that initial article, but I did find an archived copy of an article from Hawaii News Now on the topic: Wildlife officials are planning to intensify efforts today to capture a large catlike animal spotted in the lower Olinda area of Upcountry Maui. A search team sent out yesterday found evidence the animal does exist. They discovered tree trunks with deep scratch marks and a number of doves that appeared to be killed by a catlike paw. Wildlife experts plan to bait an existing trap today and add four more traps. Officials s...
Read more