Wailapa Flood Photos

Friday, Mar 17th, 2006 by Andy | 2 Comments
Filed under: Journalism

You may have heard about the flood tragedy on Kauai where a dam broke after heavy rains and washed an entire valley out to the ocean. Two people have been found dead and 5 more are missing, all from a house that was completely swept away by the wall of water and debris. Here’s one article about it in the newspaper.

I haven’t had time to blog about the circumstances of the dam break yet, but I went with a friend to take some pictures that I want to post ASAP (as soon as possible–for the non-English speakers). We took these photos about half a mile makai (towards the ocean) from where the flood crossed (and damaged) the main highway. The large versions of these photos are slightly larger and higher quality than usual.

Here is the property where we walked down to the Wailapa stream-bed. It’s at a bend in the stream near a reforested area, so the flood create a log-jam here and spread out onto several properties. The debris in the foreground is the high-water mark, the pile in the background is the log-jam:


Here is the log-jam made up of huge piles of broken tree trunks and branches. There were some pieces of housing material here and there. The further pile is about 30 feet (10 m) high. The house on the other side of the flooding was spared.


This is looking upstream, the flood-waters came directly towards this position. The reservoir is still draining, or they are pumping it out because normally this stream does not run. The main damage of the flood was that it uprooted trees which then caught on more trees, eventually ripping up small forests on its 3 mile run to the ocean.


This photo is looking downstream, where you can see the stream bends to the right, and the replanted forest straight ahead was leveled.


A Good Morning

Monday, Mar 13th, 2006 by Andy | Leave a Comment
Filed under: Weather

This cloudy weather really makes for the occasional spectacular sunrise. This one last week was a double-feature. First, the sun lit up the high clouds with fiery orange colors which could be seen through breaks in the low clouds. Here are two photos glued together:

Panorama of the first sunrise display

About 10 minutes later, the high clouds had turned white but the low clouds were lit up transparently with orange light.

Second sunrise display of colors

Nounou Waterfalls

Sunday, Mar 12th, 2006 by Andy | Leave a Comment
Filed under: History, Waterfalls, Weather

The waterfalls on Nounou mountain, the Sleeping Giant, are so ephemeral because there is so little area on the upper slopes to catch and funnel the rain. It takes a lot of rain and a quick break in the clouds to see them. We had another four inches of rain last night, there were a few showers in the morning, and so I was lucky to see them when I went out around noon today. And they lasted long enough for me to go get my camera and tripod. Here are the very rare Nounou waterfalls:


There are actually two waterfalls, the taller one of about 200′ (60 m) on the large black cliff face, and a shorter one of about 40′ (12 m) on the smaller cliff above to the left. In this picture, the lower one is falling straight, and the upper one is being blown almost upwards by the wind. There is so little water flowing that the wind would sometimes blow both of them sideways.

I bet Nounou has memories of many larger waterfalls, when it was a bigger mountain. When clouds obscure the peak, as they have often recently, the cliffs looked like those of the Na Pali coast or maybe Hanalei, reaching up into the rainy forested uplands. According to Chuck Blay’s book “Kauai’s Geologic History,” Nounou mountain is about 5 million years old and part of the original volcanic island-building stage of Kauai. Long ago, the Sleeping Giant was one of the pali, large cliff or escarpment, with streams from the uplands plunging over his shoulders, perhaps into the sea below.

Pineapple Flowers

Wednesday, Mar 1st, 2006 by Andy | 12 Comments
Filed under: Flora, History

Have you ever seen pineapple flowers before? To satisfy your horticultural curiosity:

Closeup of a young pineapple about 2 inches (5cm) across, with little purple tube flowers (.4 inches, 1 cm long) budding from each nodule

Most people know that pineapples grow in Hawaii, it used to be a big industry on Kauai with fields and large canneries in both Kapaa and Lawai. I have read that pineapple flowers are the reason that there are no hummingbirds in Hawaii. The colorful hummingbirds would probably thrive here but the pinapple industry doesn’t want them imported because they can pollinate the flowers, which produces unattractive little brown seeds in the fruit. Pineapples are still a major crop for the Dole and Del Monte companies on the islands of Lanai and Oahu, although Del Monte has announced they are quitting because they can grow them cheaper elsewhere.

Most people have also heard you can cut the top off a pineapple and it will grow into a new plant, so I decided to try. The first thing I didn’t know is that it takes 18-24 months to grow another pineapple. We planted some tops at the other house we rented and later moved them to our new house. They survived the move, and I’ve been planting new tops whenever we get a sweet pineapple from the farmer’s market. So we now have have a prickly pineapple patch which I keep well watered. What really surprised me is that pineapple plants produce flowers and that the flowers, in my case, are purple. I always thought the flowers were internal, that the little red leaves were the flowers.

Pineapples are the only edible plant in the showy bromeliad family, and are still very decorative. In case you want to try outside the tropics, you should be able to root a pineapple top and maybe grow it indoors behind a sunny window during the winter. When you eat a pineapple, cut off the green top at the point where it meets the fruit. Peel off the little leaves at the base to expose a 1/4 inch (.5 cm) of the stalk. It may already have some root buds. Sit the top in a small glass with enough water to submerge the exposed stalk, and place on a window sill—the one in our kitchen below isn’t even very sunny. When it has as many roots as the one on the right, plant it in good soil with plenty of compost, water it twice a week and expose it to as much sunlight and warmth as possible—for two years.

Two pineapple tops rooting in glasses of water on our kitchen window sill

Cold Spell

Wednesday, Mar 1st, 2006 by Andy | 1 Comment
Filed under: Gear, Weather

Back at the end of November, I metioned putting on a long sleeve shirt on a cold 62 °F (16.5 °C) morning. It turns out we had a warm and dry December, but the rainy weather of the past two weeks has kept temperatures low again.

How low? Well, I’ve been wearing long sleeves again, not just at sunrise, but most of the day. And then I’ve been wearing socks in and around the house, much more than I ever did last year. But I have to admit that socks look and feel funny with slippahs (slippers, flip-flops) :

Andys white socks in good Scott brand flip-flops [no click-to-enlarge]

I’m not sure if the locals ever wear socks with their slippahs. I walked around the neighborhood like this and talked to some of the kama ‘aina (island born) neighbors, but they were too polite to mention my fashion faux-pas. One solution to the funny feeling between my toes is to wear Tevas (sports sandals):

Andys white socks in Teva brand sports sandals [no click-to-enlarge]

However, I am sure that I’ve never seen a local or a resident wear Tevas, with or without socks. Only the tourists wear them—locals prefer their slippahs or just tennis shoes.

If you take a close look at the first picture, I am actually modeling two lowly, yet critical, pieces of gear:

  • Scott brand slippahs. If you’re a mainlander like me and you try to wear the cheap $3 flip-flops, your feet will hurt sooner or later. First, the foam sole compresses over time and you feel every sharp pebble, and then the lack of support will flatten the arch of your shoe-trained feet. Locals who grew up in these are immune, tourists can get away with wearing them for a week or two, but if you want to wear slippahs for more than a month, get something bettah.

    Scotts cost $18 at K-mart, but they have a real rubber sole and arch support. My pair has lasted through a year of constant usage and long walks without hurting my feet or ankles. You could probably hike in them if you wanted to imitate the locals. However, if you just want camp slippahs in Kalalau (or in the Sierra in the summer), take the $3 kind because they are much, much lighter.

    And no, I don’t play the guitar or the ukulele, I just liked that design better than plain black.

  • White tube socks. Kauai’s red dirt is famous for it’s ability to stain or color your clothes. Since most hikes on Kauai are either muddy or dusty, your shoes and socks will get dirty. This is why the local hike in slippahs, but my feet need trail shoes or hiking boots, which means I need socks.

    You can see that mine have some local color, but sometimes they’re just so muddy you don’t want to wash them with anything else. And some of the less traveled trails are overgrown with invasive plants full of burrs that are near impossible to remove. So, after a good adventure, you sometimes just want to throw your socks in the trash. Instead of tossing expensive hiking socks, I just buy a 12-pack of the cotton tube socks every year, white being cheap and easy to find.

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