Oahu Hike Tales

Most of us who live in Hawaii or have an interest in the islands are familiar with the TV shows Magnum P.I. and Hawaii Five-O. Remember scenes from a high vantage point with Rabbit Island and the Waimanalo coast in the background? If you were wondering, those scenes were filmed at the Makapuu Lighthouse overlook, a site accessible via a 45 minute walk from Kalanianaole Highway.  After years of driving from Honolulu to my windward side home in Kaneohe, I finally decided in the summer of 1994 to check out what lay beyond that gated roadway at the bottom of the long hill on the Hawaii Kai Golf Course side. What had taken a lifelong Oahu resident so long to explore this place? Probably like many others, I had a notion that access to the road beyond the gate was not allowed. Even though more times than not I saw cars parked along the roadway fronting the gate indicating that people were tramping around up there, I categorized these folks as trespassers who'd placed themselves at the mer...

  For me, hiking the Koolau summit has been both an exhilarating and tortuous experience. The exhilaration comes in the form of views of rarely seen vistas, of being closer to nature than most, of the comradery of close friends, and of post-hike memories of the experience. The torture manifests itself in--among other things--lung busting ascents of handholdless slopes with a heavy pack, cramped muscles brought on by exertion the body cannot tolerate, relentless assaults of the scorching sun, and mental anguish from the realization a misstep could mean injury or death. Since I keep returning to hike the summit again and again, either I'm a masochist (I'm not) or I'm addicted to the exhilaration like a chain-smoker is to cigarettes. My most recent experience with the above-described phenomena was on Sunday, 1/25/98, when I joined a group of 12 others to make our way across the crest between Mount Olympus and Konahuanui, the highest point in the Koolau range. What follows i...