First Run at the Power Line
Nov. 1st, 2020 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aOnce upon a time, native Hawaiians would make treks across Kauai through the interior, along various paths. Today, those paths are largely collapsed thanks to invasive goats causing erosion, and remaining cross-island trails like the Powerline Trail aren't necessarily in the best of shape.
I should say that I have no idea if the Powerline Trail was actually an ancient trail. As the name suggests today it parallels a high-voltage electricity line. But, it runs along ridge lines toward the northeast of the island, well inland from the highway that goes around the island. So it could have been such an ancient path.
L. and I had been making plans to walk it for a while. We'd originally intended to walk the whole thing, from north to south: 10-11 miles and 6-7 hours, but I read enough about the poor state of the trail that I decided I'd prefer to investigate it before we went to all the trouble of setting up cars in a shuttle.
So that's what we did yesterday.
Or at least what we planned.
The south side of the Powerline Trail is up in the Keahua Arboretum, a little park up in the hills west of Kapa'a. I'd been up there once before, to hike the Kuilea Ridge Trail, but my dad drove. He commented at the time that I wouldn't like driving the road, and he was right. It got pretty narrow toward the end, with a scary ditch just to the right of the road. Bleh.
I met L. up there, because his wife doesn't want him driving in the car with other folks right now, which is entirely understandable. More on that momentarily.
After we met at the parking lot, we walked up the road to the Powerline Trail, which is just a wee bit past the Arboretum. The plan was to go maybe 2.5 to 3.5 miles in, because there were some good outlooks there.
We made it about half a mile. My dad had told me that the start of the trail was quite overgrown. And, it actually wasn't horrible, but there was a lot of brush. I'd also read that it turned into a swamp in the middle.
What I wasn't prepared for was that it turned into a lake just a half-mile in. Or a river, or something. The trail was entirely submerged.
L. bravely tried to work his way through the weeds to the left of the trail. He commented that he was happy there weren't any snakes on the island, and I agreed. They're a real threat if you go off-trail in my long-time home of California as well as his native Kentucky. Here, we just had to contend with the buffalo grass. But we spent maybe five minutes making it five or ten feet, and then we got to a place where we couldn't really go forward any more, even with L. swinging his machete.
Fortunately, it looked to me like we'd gotten past the flooded portion of the trail, so I fought through the brush to get back there, and ... SPLASH!
That was the end of our attempt to walk the Powerline Trail.
We're going to try again from the north, sometime soon, and if we can get far enough along that to see the center, and if looks manageable enough, we'll try the whole thing next summer, when everything's had a few weeks to dry.
L. suggested that we walk the road past the Powerline Trail, and he was right, it was a gorgeous quarter or half mile. It ended at a river crossing, where the road is partially submerged, with the river flowing over it. This is apparently the path to the Blue Hole, one of the amazing sites in Kauai, with numerous waterfalls flowing down from Mount Waialeale. That definitely sounds like a place for a future hike, but it would need to be planned to begin with wading.
On our way back, we explored a little side path, which looked like it was a real path, but which was extremely overgrown, so that we were constantly pushing plants back as we advanced. We went up that a bit too, but I eventually got tired of fighting with the plants, and we turned back, with no idea of what that trail really was or where it went.
There were tourists.
Out by the entrance to the Powerline we saw a pair of women who asked what the trail was like, and when we told them it was flooded, they seemed entirely determined to continue on. They had this spark in their eye like this was going to be their only chance ever, and if they had to wade through miles of lakes, they would.
Later in the day, we met another pair of women, and these ones were looking for somewhere to swim, which was pretty weird, but L. pointed them to the river at the Arboretum. When she was talking to us, one of those women kept taking a step forward, and I kept taking a step back.
Friday was the 15th day since we've started allowing people onto the islands without quarantine if they take a pre-arrival test. The problem is that it's a wholly inadequate response that's going to bring COVID back to our island, which has been almost entirely safe due to our hard work and sacrifice over the last six months. Now, Governor Ige and Mayor Kawakami are pissing our sacrifice away.
In just the last four days we've had four different people (I think! The stories were so redundant that I'm not 100% sure that it was four cases and not three) who came down with COVID on Kauai after testing negative before they arrival. Those were people who came in sick because the scant few cases of COVID we've had in recent months has all been in quarantine. (At least as scary was the woman flying to another island who didn't have her test results before she got on the plane, and as soon as she landed and turned on her phone, discovered she was positive. That means that everyone on that flight was potentially exposed, like that ill-fated flight to Ireland the other week that five days ago had already exploded to 59 cases.) Anywho, three or four imported cases here on Kauai, and as of today that's already spread to two more. 59 cases is just around the corner.
That means that out of greed and laziness and shitty politics (kowtowing to the tourism board) we're definitely letting COVID on to the island, and we KNEW how to do it safer (a required post-arrival test, at the minimum). Our mayor's half-assed answer: make post-arrival tests optional, and try to bribe tourists into taking it. Well, the county has just reported that a grand total of 2% of all tourists are taking advantage of that. That's because we're admitting ticking time bombs to the islands who DON'T WANT TO KNOW if they have COVID, because if they get tested, their ill-advised, irresponsible vacation will cause them to be trapped here for at least two weeks. So instead, we can expect any tourist COVID cases to have a higher instance of infecting other people, from their hotels, to their restaurants, to the beaches, to the hiking trails, to the plane ride back. Two weeks on, we should be seeing our numbers start to upward upward any moment, and the only way we're not going to have our nine ICU beds on Kauai totally overwhelmed is if Honolulu goes straight over the cliff first.
Fun times.
That all means that I was very wary of any tourists we met on Friday (and I've been a bit concerned about them over at Poipu Beach too).
After all of our other explorations we decided to walk the Kuilau Ridge Trail. I did it once before, back before the pandemic. It was much less muddy this time (which tells me that the Powerline Trail must be VERY susceptible to mud & flood). It has gorgeous views of Waialeale and the nearby mountains. I actually got my first-ever good view of the Blue Hole crater, because there was a short time when it wasn't covered with clouds.
We walked to the bridge, which is the middle part of that trail, and turned back, because by then we saw it'd be at least 4 by the time we got back to the car.
So, a good day's walking. I was actually pretty sore that night and Saturday morning, which surprised me.
I do like my solitaire hikes, but it was nice having a hiking partner for once. L. was easy to talk to, which isn't a surprise as he's a community leader who talks with people. We've tentatively planned to do another joint hike toward the end of November, though it increasingly becomes a question of what the weather will allow, since hiking is obviously quite susceptible to rain. We might try the north side of the Powerline Trail next time, if the stars (and clouds) align.
I should say that I have no idea if the Powerline Trail was actually an ancient trail. As the name suggests today it parallels a high-voltage electricity line. But, it runs along ridge lines toward the northeast of the island, well inland from the highway that goes around the island. So it could have been such an ancient path.
L. and I had been making plans to walk it for a while. We'd originally intended to walk the whole thing, from north to south: 10-11 miles and 6-7 hours, but I read enough about the poor state of the trail that I decided I'd prefer to investigate it before we went to all the trouble of setting up cars in a shuttle.
So that's what we did yesterday.
Or at least what we planned.
The south side of the Powerline Trail is up in the Keahua Arboretum, a little park up in the hills west of Kapa'a. I'd been up there once before, to hike the Kuilea Ridge Trail, but my dad drove. He commented at the time that I wouldn't like driving the road, and he was right. It got pretty narrow toward the end, with a scary ditch just to the right of the road. Bleh.
I met L. up there, because his wife doesn't want him driving in the car with other folks right now, which is entirely understandable. More on that momentarily.
After we met at the parking lot, we walked up the road to the Powerline Trail, which is just a wee bit past the Arboretum. The plan was to go maybe 2.5 to 3.5 miles in, because there were some good outlooks there.
We made it about half a mile. My dad had told me that the start of the trail was quite overgrown. And, it actually wasn't horrible, but there was a lot of brush. I'd also read that it turned into a swamp in the middle.
What I wasn't prepared for was that it turned into a lake just a half-mile in. Or a river, or something. The trail was entirely submerged.
L. bravely tried to work his way through the weeds to the left of the trail. He commented that he was happy there weren't any snakes on the island, and I agreed. They're a real threat if you go off-trail in my long-time home of California as well as his native Kentucky. Here, we just had to contend with the buffalo grass. But we spent maybe five minutes making it five or ten feet, and then we got to a place where we couldn't really go forward any more, even with L. swinging his machete.
Fortunately, it looked to me like we'd gotten past the flooded portion of the trail, so I fought through the brush to get back there, and ... SPLASH!
That was the end of our attempt to walk the Powerline Trail.
We're going to try again from the north, sometime soon, and if we can get far enough along that to see the center, and if looks manageable enough, we'll try the whole thing next summer, when everything's had a few weeks to dry.
L. suggested that we walk the road past the Powerline Trail, and he was right, it was a gorgeous quarter or half mile. It ended at a river crossing, where the road is partially submerged, with the river flowing over it. This is apparently the path to the Blue Hole, one of the amazing sites in Kauai, with numerous waterfalls flowing down from Mount Waialeale. That definitely sounds like a place for a future hike, but it would need to be planned to begin with wading.
On our way back, we explored a little side path, which looked like it was a real path, but which was extremely overgrown, so that we were constantly pushing plants back as we advanced. We went up that a bit too, but I eventually got tired of fighting with the plants, and we turned back, with no idea of what that trail really was or where it went.
There were tourists.
Out by the entrance to the Powerline we saw a pair of women who asked what the trail was like, and when we told them it was flooded, they seemed entirely determined to continue on. They had this spark in their eye like this was going to be their only chance ever, and if they had to wade through miles of lakes, they would.
Later in the day, we met another pair of women, and these ones were looking for somewhere to swim, which was pretty weird, but L. pointed them to the river at the Arboretum. When she was talking to us, one of those women kept taking a step forward, and I kept taking a step back.
Friday was the 15th day since we've started allowing people onto the islands without quarantine if they take a pre-arrival test. The problem is that it's a wholly inadequate response that's going to bring COVID back to our island, which has been almost entirely safe due to our hard work and sacrifice over the last six months. Now, Governor Ige and Mayor Kawakami are pissing our sacrifice away.
In just the last four days we've had four different people (I think! The stories were so redundant that I'm not 100% sure that it was four cases and not three) who came down with COVID on Kauai after testing negative before they arrival. Those were people who came in sick because the scant few cases of COVID we've had in recent months has all been in quarantine. (At least as scary was the woman flying to another island who didn't have her test results before she got on the plane, and as soon as she landed and turned on her phone, discovered she was positive. That means that everyone on that flight was potentially exposed, like that ill-fated flight to Ireland the other week that five days ago had already exploded to 59 cases.) Anywho, three or four imported cases here on Kauai, and as of today that's already spread to two more. 59 cases is just around the corner.
That means that out of greed and laziness and shitty politics (kowtowing to the tourism board) we're definitely letting COVID on to the island, and we KNEW how to do it safer (a required post-arrival test, at the minimum). Our mayor's half-assed answer: make post-arrival tests optional, and try to bribe tourists into taking it. Well, the county has just reported that a grand total of 2% of all tourists are taking advantage of that. That's because we're admitting ticking time bombs to the islands who DON'T WANT TO KNOW if they have COVID, because if they get tested, their ill-advised, irresponsible vacation will cause them to be trapped here for at least two weeks. So instead, we can expect any tourist COVID cases to have a higher instance of infecting other people, from their hotels, to their restaurants, to the beaches, to the hiking trails, to the plane ride back. Two weeks on, we should be seeing our numbers start to upward upward any moment, and the only way we're not going to have our nine ICU beds on Kauai totally overwhelmed is if Honolulu goes straight over the cliff first.
Fun times.
That all means that I was very wary of any tourists we met on Friday (and I've been a bit concerned about them over at Poipu Beach too).
After all of our other explorations we decided to walk the Kuilau Ridge Trail. I did it once before, back before the pandemic. It was much less muddy this time (which tells me that the Powerline Trail must be VERY susceptible to mud & flood). It has gorgeous views of Waialeale and the nearby mountains. I actually got my first-ever good view of the Blue Hole crater, because there was a short time when it wasn't covered with clouds.
We walked to the bridge, which is the middle part of that trail, and turned back, because by then we saw it'd be at least 4 by the time we got back to the car.
So, a good day's walking. I was actually pretty sore that night and Saturday morning, which surprised me.
I do like my solitaire hikes, but it was nice having a hiking partner for once. L. was easy to talk to, which isn't a surprise as he's a community leader who talks with people. We've tentatively planned to do another joint hike toward the end of November, though it increasingly becomes a question of what the weather will allow, since hiking is obviously quite susceptible to rain. We might try the north side of the Powerline Trail next time, if the stars (and clouds) align.