Over the past weekend, James and I hiked from Tripler to Haiku Stairs with two other couples. The hike started out great as seen below:
See the pretty rainbow? Yes, that was when we were all happy and full of energy. Mind you, we started the hike at 8:30AM. It was raining a little, but it always rains near Tripler because we're in the mountains.
We started the hike with a canopy of trees sheltering us from rain/sun. The worst part at the beginning was just the small branches that kept scratching my legs. No biggie there. We walked a little while longer and encountered the first rope where we would go down the side of the mountain. Looks pretty easy from here:
When we could see, the valley was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! So green! Much different from the hussle and bussle of Honolulu/Waikiki and the beach scenery you imagine Oahu to have.
The rain started to pour down and we started getting into the clouds as we were climbing up and down the mountains. Some parts had rope we could hold. Thankfully James packed me a pair of gloves so I could grip a little better.
We had pretty low visibility and pretty soon, we couldn't see much ahead of us. Black ominous figures turned out to be larger mountains/ridge lines we would continue to climb up.
We hiked for a good 6 hours through the mud and the rain. The fog definitely played with our senses because we couldn't see anything below or ahead of us. James has a video of the wind howling as I'm walking towards him after coming down a ridge line. One misstep to the right or left and could almost fall to your death!
We finally did make it to the end and got the stairs! Yay! Now, we just had to walk down the 3,000+ steps!
It was still super foggy and we didn't see a view until we walked further down. As you can see in the picture below, there's the H3 freeway below. Crazy!!!
8 hours later, our group finally made it down to the bottom. This is definitely a one and done type of hike. A couple days afterwards, my legs and arms are completely sore! Clothes are permanently stained. The guy below told us that the hike is much easier coming from another trail head. O well, we're young and courageous! :-P
