| DATE: | February 10, 1998 | WEATHER: | cool, overcast, excellent hiking conditions | HIKERS: | Daryn Ohta, Grant Tokumi, Kurt Heilbron, Alex Okihara |
One of the streams that has to be crossed at the beginning of the hike. Good place for a swim if you want to cool off.
Alex taking a break on a tree. The Ohulehule summit is in the background.
The trail is VERY overgrown in areas. Here we are in chest high uluhe. We got lost around 2 times. Sometimes the trail seemed to lead in different directions, and
sometimes the trail just seemed to end, being so overgrown. 
Climbing up the super steep area with the steel cable (that part is crazy nuts).
DA ROCK!! I almost broke Kurt's and Daryn's legs with a huge
boulder. I was climbing up the steel cable and I stepped on a huge boulder, it must have been at
least 150 lbs. The rock slid down under my foot's weight, and before I
knew it, the rock was hanging over a ledge, on the verge of rolling down
the trail. The only thing keeping it from rolling was my foot stepping on
it. This picture shows where I was at that point, holding the rock with my foot. 20 feet below me is Kurt and
Daryn. I told them the situation, but they didn't have
any room to move to the side to avoid the rock. I could not use my hands
to help push the rock over the side because my hands were holding on to the
cable. Daryn was thinking of hangin from a tree off the side, but they
both opted to just stay there and hope the rock would go over the edge
before it reached them. OK, so I slowly let go of the rock and there it
went rolling. It was sort of shaped like a football so its course was not
a predictable one. At first, it started rolling off my left, but then like
how a football does, the rock quickly changed course and started rolling
straight down the trail!! I was thinking "OH NO!!!" From my angle, it was
headed straight for Daryn. And from the looks in Daryn's eyes, he was
thinking, "OH S!#T!!!!". I thought one of them was goners. They both made
a stance like they wanted to go somewhere, but there was no where to go. I
swear, the rock came like within 4 ft from Daryn's legs when it took
another turn to the right and smashed into Kurt, breaking both his legs and
a few ribs, then he had to be choppered out of there. Jus kidding. It
took a turn to the right, but Kurt was on the left. Whew. The rock went
over the side right next to Daryn. But the rock did hit the tree that
Daryn was thinking of hanging off of so good thing he didn't hang off that
tree. After that incident, I was in shock for a moment. One of them could
have died there. Yikes!
Kahana Valley in the distance. I think that high point on the middle ridge is the Puu Piei summit. 
| Awesome views from the summit. Kualoa Ranch on the left. The little dot in the water is Chinaman's Hat. |
Mission accomplished. From left: Daryn, Grant, Alex, Kurt. Now to go back down.The trail took us around 10 hours, including lunch and time lost looking for the trail when we got lost. The steel cable area is pretty treacherous and is killers on the hands. That steel cable is hard to hold on to. But at least its there, so I'm not complaining. The trail is also very overgrown so I would recommend wearing long pants to protect the legs from uluhe attack.
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