Oahu Outdoors

Of the northeast side of Oahu is a cool pair of old volcanic cones sticking out of the ocean called Mokulua Islands. Na Mokulua means "the two islands" so i guess it's redundant to add "islands" to the end of it. You can take a kayak out there and i thought it would be really neat to hike to the top. The back side is a big cliff. Unfortunately you aren't supposed to do that because the islands are bird nesting areas. Still, it has a small beach on it and the view is probably worth the two mile paddle it get out there.

This is where we made our beach landing. You can see Na Mokulua in the background on the left, and the more distant Rabbit Island on the center horizon.

This is where we initially tried to land, just like these people but it's the wrong place and the tide was quickly making it disappear.

The island is nothing more than a jagged coral reef that has raised above sea level.

We had seen a kayak rental place the last time i had visited but this time we couldn't find it because it had changed locations. Looking around for it took some time, and i wasted some more of our time by forgetting something i had to have after we'd left the house. By the time we rented out kayaks and ate lunch it was apparent that we would not have enough time to get out to the islands and back before the rental store closed for the day.

Instead we checked out some canals around a golf course and went out in the ocean to a much closer island called Popoia Island. Topographically it's an extremely boring flat disk barely above sea level. Once you get out there though it's a pretty interesting coral reef getting pounded away by the waves. It's practically hollow and covered in jagged holes, some of which are full of bones. Many of the holes are covered with weird vegetation so it's only safe to walk on visible rock.

Part II: Kuli'ou'ou Ridge Trail

I couldn't convince my dad to do the Stairway to Heaven trail but there are a decent number of other hiking trails on Oahu. We settled one called the Kuli'ou'ou Ridge Trail which climbs from the valley floor up to the spine of the island. It's about three miles long and mostly through forest until it breaks out near the top. From ridge you have a commanding view of large parts of the east side of the island. From the top an unofficial trail continues along the very narrow ridge to the top of the mountain and beyond, to the Hawaii Loa Ridge Trail.

The trail starts at the end of a cul de sac in a neighborhood and immediately starts climbing through pretty generic scrubby forest. Good place for goats.

The first mile of the trail we were constantly exposed to the sound of buzzing insects but we weren't being bothered by any. When the trail momentarily broke out of the trees we could see these yellow blooms everywhere around us and the buzz i guess were bees.

For a time when the trail gets higher is actually seems more spacious.

It's nice forest

I hadn't seen these kinds of pines before, unless they are from New Zealand.

The trail is pretty easy for the first 2 miles. It starts off in generic looking forest but after a mile changes into a more pine oriented forest canopy as it crests the ridge. From there it climbs the ridge until the on the last mile it ascends steeply and begins breaking out of the treetops as the ridge narrows.

This is where it gets steep.

Weirdly the higher you get the more it looks like jungle.

When it gets steep you finally start to break out of the forest.

A neat view of Hawaii Kaii and Koko Head crater.

Looking down some of the stairs.

At this point you will hope these are the last of the stairs.

We were walking up a long ridge just like the two pictured here.

Finally the view from the top! All those long ridges on the south side end and drop straight down on the north side, as if you are looking over the rim of a huge crater that's been destroyed by time.

This is the view straight in front of you. As mentioned at the top of this post, Nu Mokulua is on the far left and on the far right is Rabbit Island. In between is one of the nicest beach areas in the state.

I had intended on continuing along the ridgetop to a position that offered a view towards the west. Unfortunately i had only just started when i had a vestibular problem. It wasn't because i'm scared of heights, normally i consider narrow ridgelines and huge cliffs particularly exciting. This day though, it became obvious that i did not have the proper balance to be walking on a one foot wide path on top of a 1,000 foot cliff. So i had to turn around about 200 yards from my goal. It was infuriating for me, personally, but i could do it again on a better day, and i can only fall off the cliff once. To make it even more bothersome, i have some pills for the dizzy attacks but i didn't bring them with me because i felt fine when we left the house.

After being very dizzy crossing an extremely narrow and exposed section of rock i came to this frayed rope which descended about 15 feet to the next narrow section of trail. I took a break.

This is a stitched panorama. The rope is immediately below me. In the sun on the left is the mountain top but all i wanted to do was get to the much closer peak at the top center. I watched two teenagers spend about 10 minutes scooting down one of the exposed areas on their butts and decided it was too dangerous with my dizziness and the mud from a night of rain.

On the way back to the end of the official trail.

Part III: Sunset

My dads balcony faces west so it's always a good place to be on the lookout for a good sunset. We'd been having a lot of volcanic smog because the winds were blowing the wrong way from the Big Island and it was making a lot of weird skies. One day it was weird enough i thought it might be a good sunset.

And it was a good sunset.

The smog acted as a nice filter so my camera was able to pick up some sunspots which you can see here in the top half of the sun. Those spots were responsible for a big solar storm that caused some really good aurora in Alaska that day, where i wasn't around for Northern Lights pictures.