I Got Scooped

Sunday, Jun 8th, 2008 by Andy | 1 Comment
Filed under: Hiking

While I strive to be a source of information about the Kalalau trail, I wasn’t able to hike it this year and see the repairs that were reportedly done in the dangerous-looking sections. Another resident, Arius Hopman, hikes the trail more regularly and has finally taken photos, and Juan posted them on Island Breath. Arius is a landscape photographer with a beautiful gallery in Hanapepe (or a gallery made beautiful by his works I should say), his works are also on his website. I don’t know him, but I have seen him at his gallery on Friday Art Night.

While I’m not going to take back all my doubts about the solidity of the work, I do admit the trail looks better. For someone like me who has only been hiking on it for the past 5 years and got used to the roughness, the repaired parts look like a sidewalk now, for better or for worse. It should make it easier for people with a fear of heights to hike past without being paralyzed by the void.

One image shows a “trail puka” (hole, pronounced poo-ka), an “erosion hole in the trail from goats, runoff and hikers who get pushed off the trail by encroaching brush.” They are prevalent in the third mile leaving Hanakapi’ai and in the ninth mile, on some of the steep little valleys leading up to Red Hill. To me, these are the critical maintenance spots because they can easily cause ankle injuries or worse on a steep slope. Plus once the hole starts, erosion just keeps making it larger until it cuts the trail and a bypass is created, causing more erosion. These areas should be high priority for maintenance because the holes are difficult to repair, yet easily and cheaply prevented by cutting the brush.

Just a Pretty Picture

Sunday, Jun 1st, 2008 by Andy | Leave a Comment
Filed under: Photography

The I was driving back from the Hanapepe farmer’s market on Thursday, when I noticed the view into Hanapepe canyon was especially clear:


This is not the scenic viewpoint along the highway, but a spot a little further east. If you’re driving towards Hanapepe, pull off at a dirt road that starts right next to the sign that says “Scenic Viewpoint, 1000 feet,” and walk 200-300 feet west (towards the viewpoint and Hanapepe). At a break in the trees, you should see the canyon and the colorful bougainvilleas in the foreground.

Hanapepe canyon goes all the way up to the back side of the Wai’ale’ale plateau region, just below the Kawaikini summit. Hanapepe canyon drains the back side of the ridge south of Kawaikini, an area seldom seen from the east or west (Olokele canyon, a branch of the Waimea river watershed, drains the south-west side of Kawaikini). As a matter of fact, Kawaikini is visible from these highway viewpoints, although it is usually in the clouds, or behind the trees as in my photo above. But the whole canyon is private land, owned by the Gay and Robinson sugar plantation to provide the water for their fields—and therefore inaccessible.

To a hiker like me, views like this into a remote and inaccessible canyon are enticing. There are some great waterfalls up there that you can see on helicopter tours, including Manawaiopuna falls made famous by the movie Jurassic Park, but this is the closest you can get on land. Tantalizingly, the dirt road at the pulloff is the private road to access the canyon.

Wailua Headwaters

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 by Andy | 14 Comments
Filed under: Hiking, Waterfalls

I wish we knew what the Hawaiians called this place at the foot of Mount Waialeale and Kawaikini, now called the Blue Hole. That name was invented recently by haoles, but I don’t like it because it’s inaccurate and not lyrical. Nor is it the Waialeale Crater, as another purist points out, because it was not the site of an eruption, though it may be the gorge that has eroded out from under the crater.

To further complicate matters, people are starting to call the terminal cliff a “weeping wall,” which is just too lyrical.

Whatever it’s called, it’s a very unique place where a river springs forth at the bottom of a cliff 3000 feet (roughly 1000 m) straight down from the highest point on the island and carves a deep but short canyon out into the eastern lowlands. It’s also a very difficult hike combining 2 miles of slippery boulder hopping and 1 mile of difficult route finding. But it’s always an incredible trek, and I finally took a camera on this hike to share the experience. But first …

WARNING: crossing rivers, boulder-hopping, and swimming in waterfalls are dangerous activities. Rivers can flood quickly and may sweep you away easily or to trap you on the other side. Waterfalls sometimes carry rocks and branches with fatal consequences and the nearby cliffs are unstable. Hiking where there is no trail is also dangerous due to steep slopes and drop-offs. Exercise caution and proceed at your own risk.

For this hike, you’ll need tabis, felt-soled shoes sold at fishing supply stores. The best kind are the black and gray kind that look like little boots–the green sock-like ones are too flimsy. Other water shoes may work but will all slip to some extent on the wet and slimy rocks.

The forest road from the Wailua arboratum ends at the weir at the entrance to the gorge. From there, you just follow the river, alternatively hopping over boulders and walking in the water. Sometimes, there are little side trails in the forest, mostly on the right side as you make your way upstream.

As you progress, you get the feeling you’re entering a very special place, isolated from all the rest of Kauai.

While the forest road passed through groves of replanted foreign trees, a lot of the vegetation here is native, starting with the colorful ‘ohia lehua. I don’t know if it’s true that picking its flowers brings rain, but I do know I didn’t pick them and I didn’t have rain.

After what seems like a long time, you reach the first waterfall on the river. Up until now, you’ve seen a few waterfalls on the side walls, but now you have to start climbing over and around them. And you’re only one third of the way there, the easy third.

But what a waterfall it is, with two streams falling into the same pool, and a third flowing in from a narrow gorge, off to the left not visible in the picture below. I call this the three-way convergence, but I’d be open to a better name. The right-most waterfall is fed by the falls you can see above it.

The three-way waterfall is somewhat difficult to get around. Beyond that, there is more hiking in the stream, and more waterfalls.

This is one of the main waterfalls in the gorge, at around 300 feet high, and who knows where it starts.

In some places, you get a great view of the inner gorge (above). But mostly, from below, you don’t appreciate the height of the wall over 2000′ high. Looking backwards (below) you can see a 4-tiered waterfall, the one that fed the rightmost falls at the 3-way convergence. This picture also shows one of the helicopters that came in to hover for a few seconds and fly back out.

Now you can see the destination of this adventure, the springs at the back wall that are the headwaters of the Wailua river. But you’re not there yet.

As we finally got close, we had a single ray of sunlight shine on the waterfall making it sparkle.

Of course, I had to go up and touch the back wall, as far as you can go upstream.

It just boggles the mind to think that this is probably the oldest rock that you can touch in Hawaii (unless you have a permit to access the Northwestern Hawaiian islands). I like to stand there and imagine a timelapse movie of the rock’s existance: erupted and solidified when the island was half as old as the Big Island is now, covered over by thousands of layers, laying beneath a mountain until tremors and water carried away half the mountain to the lowlands. All that and the rock is only 4-6 million years old, the blink of an eye on the geological scale of the continents.

Also, you can now see the scale of these falls, which are about 40 feet high and 80 feet wide. Most of the water comes from springs above the nearest ledge, some from springs higher up, and a small trickle from all the way at the top of the mountains. Looking up, you can almost see the top, at least the top of the drainage coming from near the summit.

On the hike back, it was not always easy to find the path we had taken. It would’ve been very easy to get lost in places. There are other dangers:

This is an example of where the passage of hikers has stripped the vegetation and created a muddy slope.

More dangerously, the path crossed above some small gorges on tiny ledges half hidden by vegetation. There is a 20′ chasm in this picture.

After that, it’s a long slog back to the three-way convergence, and another long and tiring boulder hop in the cold river water back to the weir. Be very careful when you’re tired and hopping on slippery rocks. All told, it takes anywhere from 6 to 8 hours depending on how far you go, what shape you’re in, and how long it takes you to find the “trail.”

The fine print: The information and photos in this article are for illustrative purposes. For example, some photos are taken from side trails, so you can’t rely on them to find a route.

Actually, let me restate that warning: This is a very difficult route. There is no trail, and there are no trailblazers that you can rely on. You cannot rely on the existing tracks you might find in the vegetation because apparently many unknowing people have gone the wrong way. And there are some serious drop-offs between the ravines in this gorge, and they can be hidden by vegetation. Never go down a slope that you cannot get back up, you will become trapped further down the waterway. As one commenter says, ALWAYS turn around to be back before dark on this hike, boulder-hopping in the dark is asking for an accident.

Look at those last two photos again. If you’ve never done anything like this before, do not start here, because you will not have fun.

The Tamba Island

Saturday, May 24th, 2008 by Andy | Leave a Comment
Filed under: Journalism, Kauai Style

I’m always intrigued by the variety of stickers you see plastered on signs around Kauai, a sort of local graffiti. They’re usually surf-related, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out what they mean. This one was self-explanatory, but very cleverly placed:


Tamba is a small surf shop on the main highway, north of downtown Kapaa in the same plaza as the Kojima store. I first noticed it when they celebrated surfer Andy Irons’s world championship victory with a window painting that said “Andy, you da man!” (I wish I’d gotten my picture with it). I didn’t know anything more about it until I read an article in this week’s Kauai People weekly. Apparently, Tamba is the owner’s middle name, originally the name of a tribal chief in Kenya.

By the way, the Kauai People weekly paper is a great source of local news. It is owned by the Honolulu Advertiser, but they have local journalists, for example Kauai Eclectic blog writer Joan Conrow is a frequent contributor and wrote the Tamba article. They always have stories about 2 or 3 local people, usually small-business owners, volunteers, and other people who make a difference on the island, as well as local events and festivals. Residents get the paper in their mailbox every week, but it’s also available online.

Grüsse aus Österreich

Saturday, May 10th, 2008 by Andy | Leave a Comment
Filed under: Tourism

Greetings from Austria. Posting has been light on the blog, and now I am on vacation visiting my wife’s family in Europe (*). I had prepared a few photos of Kauai to post remotely, but I haven’t even gotten around to those yet. But a friend on Kauai said he wanted to see my pictures of Austria anyway, so here you are. I’m going to spare you the details about the strange toilets and the cool little cars and stick to what I know, the great outdoors.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kaua’i anymore, and it doesn’t look like Kansas either. This is the flat land around Vienna:


I love the landscape of Europe, where in most cases, houses are still clustered into towns, the fields in between are still farmed by local farmers with a variety of crops, and patches of forest remain, harvested for wood and accessible for hiking and biking.


Springtime is a great season to visit, there are flowers everywhere. This is the little town where my wife grew up and where her parents and many of her friends still live. Those are solar panels near the church, they date back to the 1980’s when the town installed a lot of solar demonstration projects. Like most of Europe, the town is an odd mix of old and new, sometimes it looks good, sometimes it doesn’t.

Not all people live in villages, the countryside is dotted with small hamlets and houses. I thought the new houses were built by city dwellers moving to the nearby countryside, but my wife assures me they belong to the well-to-do farmers and their families who work the adjacent land. One detail I noticed is that they’re always by a country lane, not in big fenced-off yards or private estates. This photo shows a Maypole which the local volunteer fireman of each town erect and decorate as a sort of fundraiser.

In between all the fields, forests, and farmhouses, there is a network of country lanes, dirt roads and forest paths that are ideal for biking. One day, I went for a 15-mile ride with my 80-year old father-in-law and I think we saw more hikers and bikers than cars. And with only one exception, every paved road, no matter how small, is in such great shape you could rollerblade on it.
And in between the villages and farmhouses, there are roadside shrines and chapels. Austria used to be a very Catholic country, and my theory is that the religion took some of the edge off the Germanic culture, in a good way. Nowadays, like all over Europe, the churches are mostly filled with older people.
Because it is springtime, everthing is green here. Not the deep, lush green of Kaua’i’s North Shore, but the exuberant green of new leaves in the bright sun. The hillsides are filled with yellow and white flowers, but I must confess, I didn’t hear the sound of music anywhere.
Actually some of the green hilly pastures remind me of the beautiful backroads on Kauai, specifically that little green valley you go through on Kainahola road between Kawaihau and Hauiki roads, inland of Kapaa.
Here in south-eastern Austria, near the city of Graz, these are the foothills of the Alps, and from the hilltops you can see the higher mountains to the north. Even though I’m not an islander by birth and I’ve lived in the mountains before, I was still surprised to not see the ocean and instead see the rolling land extend out to the horizon.
One day, we drove to the mountains, up to about 3500 feet, about the same altitude as Kokee. From there we could see the real mountains even further north and still covered in snow. This picuture shows a traditional wooden farmhouse and the lower hills back to the south.

Like the biking trails, there are countless hiking trails throughout the country. Many of these are networked into cross-country routes with clear signage all along the way. Up in the high mountains, you can hike from hut to hut, where you get a warm meal and a soft bunk bed every night. Here in the lowlands, you hike between inns and guest-houses, and even if you’re just day-hiking, it seems like there’s a outdoor café or restaurant at the end of every hike.

We went for a hike in a small gorge carved through some layers of limestone by a stream coming down from the nearby mountains. Behind me, you can see the trail marker painted on the rock, three stripes of red, white, and red that mimic the Austrian flag.


You almost never have to ford a river on these trails, and indeed there were several bridges to cross the stream whenever it was impossible to continue on one side. I heard the bridges were washed out in a flood 3 years ago and rebuilt the same year. This year a windstorm knocked down hundreds of trees less than 3 months ago, and the trail was already cleared by chain-sawing the trunks or rerouting the trail around them.

Somehow, this photo sums up many of the small details I liked about Austria: along one section of this cross-country trail, at a junction deep in a scenic ravine, the sign on the left clearly maps out a side trail up to a hamlet, while the sign on the right invites the hiker to eat at the small restaurant there, “only 45 minutes away.” Further up the side trail, another sign for the same restaurant advertises the menu.

I know I’ve made a lot of comparisons that sound unfavorable to “how they do things back home” on Kaua’i, but it’s hard not to like Austria, and as a visitor I only see the good things. I know from my in-laws that people here have to work hard to preserve what they’ve got, and from what I can read in the newspapers, politics here are like politics everywhere.

(*) True story: when I met my future wife in California, she always used to send mail home addressed as “Austria/Europe.” I have never had any post office anywhere mess up my mail in any way, so I thought she was being obtuse. But she said that she started writing addresses that way when a birthday card she had sent arrived a month late and postmarked through Australia.

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