By 9:45 a.m. on this atypical Saturday morning, we had all piled into Mike's 4x4 and were heading west toward Wahiawa from the Uslan homestead in the Aiea/Pearlridge area. On the way, Mike and I scanned the mountains, wondering out loud about the possibility of rain and subsequent flash floods that the weather folks had predicted. "Should be okay," Mike surmised. "Even if flood, no problem." Driving a powerful offroad machine equipped with kung-fu grip tires, hill-scaling four-wheel-drive, and a winch on his front bumper, Mike had reason to be confident.
In twenty minutes or so, we have cleared Wahiawa, nowadays a conglomeration of fast food places and pawn shops catering to a large military population in the area, and are heading mauka toward Helemano Military Reservation. At the beginning of the reservation, we veer left off the main drag and onto Pa'ala'a Uka Pupukea Road, a dirt and gravel thoroughfare constructed and maintained by the military. The road dips and rises its way through several lush river-bottomed valleys and eventually ascends to the top of the Koolaus with exit points at Pupukea and Kahuku.
But we will not travel as far as Kahuku and Pupukea on that day. Our goal, instead, is six miles of off-road riding away. Before setting out on the trail, we stop off at Palama Uka, a campground owned by the Palama Settlement. Mike, his family, and some friends had spent a weekend at the camp about a month earlier (arrangements can be made through the Settlement) and he had told me about how beautiful the area around the camp was.
He was not exaggerating. Although the cabins at campground are run-down, everything else about Palama Uka is superb: its calming solitude, its surrounding native vegetation, and especially its magnificent view of a gaping green valley with a trio of ridges rising to the Koolau Summit.
Our intended destination still awaiting us, we leave Palama Uka behind and pile back in the 4x4 and head for the trailhead about a half mile away. In a couple of minutes we are there. The trail starts off at the crest of a ridge and descends gradually on a graded contour path. We pass a junction with the shorter one-mile long Opae Ula Trail and continue our gentle descent.
Issac, towing Mike all the while and Nakita, led our hiking party down the trail. Kelen, because she delighted in pausing to grab handfuls of raspberries and guavas that are abundantly available trailside, lagged a bit behind. Before long, appearing at various points to the right of the trail was the Kawai Iki ditch, a man-made waterway carved through the rugged, isolated terrain to provide water for the sugar cane and pineapple industries that once dominated the Isle economy. We stopped to peer down into it, speculating about the back-breaking effort workers must have invested to complete such a project.
We tramped forward, Mike and I surveying the gray skies periodically for signs of rain. Fortunately, none came. After about 40 minutes of following the contour trail that meandered in and out of lush gullies populated by groves of guava and kukui, we reached a 50 foot deep ravine spanned by a concrete trestle. The five of us scrambled down one side and up the other and continued on the contour trail.
At a point two miles from the trailhead, we reached a dam at Kawai Iki Stream, the source for the water that flowed through the ditch and trestles along the trail we had traversed. [Photo of the Uslans on the trail.] Thinking that we had reached the end of the trail, we kicked back, loosened our boot strings, and supped on some delicious spam musubi Kelen had prepared. Meanwhile, Nakita and Issac splashed about in the pond adjacent to the dam. The sound of our laughter and Issac's yelps echoing in the remote Leeward Koolau ravine were sharp contrasts to the somber, ready-to-burst skies overhead.
After a more careful review of Stuart Ball's book, which I always lug along on hikes, we discovered that the trail continued upstream for another eighth of a mile. So after about a 20 minute respite at the dam, we packed up and continued mauka up-river.
The trail zigzagged along the river from bank to bank, necessitating some careful footwork over some slick rocks. After about 10 minutes of this, and with the valley walls rising higher and steeper around us, Mike suggested that we retreat. It would be risky to continue forward, he reasoned, because if a flash flood hit, our escape routes were nil.
So with no protests from anyone, we retreated, following the route that had brought us to a place of peaceful wonder. And while a typical Saturday morning might have netted us some additional sleep, a leisurely repast, and some athletic viewing enrichment, we opted to enjoy the company of friends and family, a pastime many of us seem to find less and less time for, in one of Oahu's truly beautiful but not often visited locales.