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| DATE: | June 14, 1997 | WEATHER: | mostly sunny and clear, brief downpours | HIKERS: | Daryn Ohta, Grant Tokumi |
The Hidden Valley is located in the Kaaawa area. Climbing starts at the
beginning of the hike to the top of this ridge. You travel for some time
on this ridge with some narrow areas.
Views of the Windward coast.
Heres an interesting rock formation. I was sure glad we didn't have to
travel OVER this rock. The trail went around it. After this, the trail
leads down into the valley.
(LEFT) - This was a surprise. I didn't expect to come across a stream
and waterfall on this hike since I thought it to be a ridge hike. This
itty bitty waterfall was small and water was hardly even flowing, but it
was a nice change in scenery. Lots of Opae in the stream.
(RIGHT) - This was taken at the waterfall looking out of the valley.
After traveling into the valley, the ridge hike turns into a valley hike,
with this lush greenery around us. Unfortunately, there was lots of
thorny plants in this area including thimbleberry and some other pokey
plant. Those plants were making this hike very uncomfortable. Long
pants (that I wasn't wearing) was on my mind.
YUMMY!!! These thimbleberries were all over the place. I guess it was
in season (summer). They made a nice snack along the hike.
I'm very sad to say that we were defeated on this hike. The trail led us up the stream. However, the stream started to disappear, and was very overgrown in areas. There were markers along the way (Mahalos to those that mark these awesome trails), but the area was just too overgrown (with those darn thorny plants) to find them all. We ended up losing the trail and turning around at that point. The trail should lead to the top of the ridge again, and meet up with the Pu'u Manamana hike.
Back on the ridge on our return trip. View of the Windward coast. Parts
of Kualoa Ranch can be seen in the upper right corner.
Looking back into the valley.
Next time, I think I will wear long pants on this hike to protect my legs from those pokey plants. Maybe even long sleeve shirt too. And a machete. And gloves. And a map. How about a football helmet to protect my face from being poked too. The hike took us around 7 hours to complete. That includes an hour break for lunch, and around 1 to 2 hours of searching for the trail, and backtracking from places that wasn't the trail. So the Hidden Valley trail still remains hidden for us......This hike was still a very nice hike. Its probably a tough hike since you will have to travel on parts of the narrow Pu'u Manamana trail. It gave a nice variety of hiking environments, and the views were spectacular.
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