Kauai, Day 67: In Which I Hike At Last
Nine and a half weeks later, I hiked for the first time since we arrived on Kauai. Well, it was my first proper few-hour long hike at least.
This was a group outing with my dad and Mary, and it almost didn't happen. We'd planned for a hike today, but then when I woke up this morning I saw, as has so often been the case since we moved here, that it was gray and raining outside. I looked at the radar maps, and found rain clouds flowing across the south of the island, then swinging north toward Waimea Canyon, which is where I'd wanted to hike.
Fortunately, I came up with an alternative: some hiking trails northwest of Kapaa. I had that in hand when my dad called at 9am to talk about our plans for the day. And, this fit right in with his plans, because it allowed him to do some more work on the duplex in Kapaa. He fixed a hole in the roof, replacing some sheetrock, while I mostly watched, carried, and learned how to do so. Then we filled a hole in the yard with dirt. (It's easier to make dirt fit in a hole in the ground than to make sheetrock fit in a hole in the ceiling.)
Our hiking destination was the Kuilau RIdge Trail which runs east along said Ridge for about two miles before it ends in a bridge, where the Moalepe Trail begins. OK, you could say it's all one trail, not two, but that's how they're labeled. And I'd previously walked the Moalepe Trail out, to the Bridge. So this completed the trip, and let me see some hiking that I'd never seen before.
The walk is pretty magnificent. You quickly rise up along the ridge, and as you do you have increasingly common views of Mt. Waialeale and other mountains north and west. But it was also magnificent just looking at the canyons and inlets between the cutbacks of the trail, because they were beautiful, and green, and full of magical foliage.
The walk was also pretty muddy. There were at least a dozen places along the trail where it was covered with mud from one side to the other. Sometimes it was just 20 or 30 feet that had to be traversed, sometimes more like 100. There's a few picnic tables a mile in, and from there it's downhill to the bridge, and that was the toughest, with several muddy, slippery places. Each of the three of us took a spill on that part of the trail: mine was the most spectacular, landing solidly on my butt when I tried to skirt around a woman and her slightly skittish dog, on a muddy, slippery slope. I also ended up with mud all up and down one arm. (When I later got home, the shoes got dropped in the garage until they dried, and the pants went straight into the wash.)
The rain threatened a few times, drizzling for several minutes, but it always let up. (I'd been afraid that we were going to end up out at the bridge, about an hour from the car, in torrential rain, with a muddy trail between us and it. Fortunately not)
We met quite a few people on the trail, all pretty muddy. I was surprised how many were "visitors" and I was even more surprised by how they all assumed that everyone was a visitor. (A few different people were surprised: "Where are you from?" "Kalaheo" "OH! You're a LOCAL!")
We all enjoyed the hike, though we were quite tired by the end. Even though it was only 4 or 5 mies round trip, spending that amount of time balancing and not slipping is pretty exhausting.
And so afterward, it was dinner in Lihue and then home for restful evenings (and a restful morning for me, before I visit the folks tomorrow afternoon for our usual Sunday.)
This was a group outing with my dad and Mary, and it almost didn't happen. We'd planned for a hike today, but then when I woke up this morning I saw, as has so often been the case since we moved here, that it was gray and raining outside. I looked at the radar maps, and found rain clouds flowing across the south of the island, then swinging north toward Waimea Canyon, which is where I'd wanted to hike.
Fortunately, I came up with an alternative: some hiking trails northwest of Kapaa. I had that in hand when my dad called at 9am to talk about our plans for the day. And, this fit right in with his plans, because it allowed him to do some more work on the duplex in Kapaa. He fixed a hole in the roof, replacing some sheetrock, while I mostly watched, carried, and learned how to do so. Then we filled a hole in the yard with dirt. (It's easier to make dirt fit in a hole in the ground than to make sheetrock fit in a hole in the ceiling.)
Our hiking destination was the Kuilau RIdge Trail which runs east along said Ridge for about two miles before it ends in a bridge, where the Moalepe Trail begins. OK, you could say it's all one trail, not two, but that's how they're labeled. And I'd previously walked the Moalepe Trail out, to the Bridge. So this completed the trip, and let me see some hiking that I'd never seen before.
The walk is pretty magnificent. You quickly rise up along the ridge, and as you do you have increasingly common views of Mt. Waialeale and other mountains north and west. But it was also magnificent just looking at the canyons and inlets between the cutbacks of the trail, because they were beautiful, and green, and full of magical foliage.
The walk was also pretty muddy. There were at least a dozen places along the trail where it was covered with mud from one side to the other. Sometimes it was just 20 or 30 feet that had to be traversed, sometimes more like 100. There's a few picnic tables a mile in, and from there it's downhill to the bridge, and that was the toughest, with several muddy, slippery places. Each of the three of us took a spill on that part of the trail: mine was the most spectacular, landing solidly on my butt when I tried to skirt around a woman and her slightly skittish dog, on a muddy, slippery slope. I also ended up with mud all up and down one arm. (When I later got home, the shoes got dropped in the garage until they dried, and the pants went straight into the wash.)
The rain threatened a few times, drizzling for several minutes, but it always let up. (I'd been afraid that we were going to end up out at the bridge, about an hour from the car, in torrential rain, with a muddy trail between us and it. Fortunately not)
We met quite a few people on the trail, all pretty muddy. I was surprised how many were "visitors" and I was even more surprised by how they all assumed that everyone was a visitor. (A few different people were surprised: "Where are you from?" "Kalaheo" "OH! You're a LOCAL!")
We all enjoyed the hike, though we were quite tired by the end. Even though it was only 4 or 5 mies round trip, spending that amount of time balancing and not slipping is pretty exhausting.
And so afterward, it was dinner in Lihue and then home for restful evenings (and a restful morning for me, before I visit the folks tomorrow afternoon for our usual Sunday.)