Oahu Hike Tales

I joined Bill Gorst, Richard McMahon, Rich Jacobsen, Fred Boll, and John Hall for yesterday's WEHOT hike. Bill and I carpooled from Kaneohe and met the others at Kenny's Burgerhouse at the Kam Shopping Center in Kalihi at 9:00. We spent a few minutes talking story at Kenny's and I enjoyed an order of pancakes and drank a large-sized drink. At 9:20, we made the short drive over to Perry Street , at the end of which is DeCorte Park. The city has just completed a new parking lot at the park and our vehicles were the only ones there when we started hiking around 9:30. To get to the trailhead, we had to skirt around the left (mauka) end of a large, high fence that borders the park's basketball court and ballfield. There are a couple gates thru the fence but both were locked hence the left side skirt-around. Once around the fence, we walked along it for maybe 50 meters and picked up a trail that heads up a rocky segment of the hillside. Just above the trailhead, a hug...

One night while channel-surfing through the several dozen TV channels available to Oahu residents, I spotted a blurb about a Sierra-Club sponsored hike along the Ulupaina trail, a trek I hadn't heard about before. Curious, I grabbed my copy of Stuart Ball's _A Hikers Guide to Oahu_ and thumbed my way through it until I found a brief description of Ulupaina in the "Closed hikes" section. "A short loop hike in the foothills above Kaneohe" is all Ball said about it. The thought of a hike so close to home had me foaming at the proverbial bit. Pawing my way through a couple of maps I have, I found Ulupaina, with a trailhead along Kahekili Highway not far past Haiku Road. Thinking that I'd have no problem hooking up with the hiking group, I didn't bother (foolishly, in hindsight) calling the Sierra Club contact phone number to obtain info. Sunday, the day of the hike, arrived, and after packing my gear, my water, and a snack, I jumped...