OHE July 25, 1998

Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 21:44:58 -1000
From: Wing C Ng (wing@Lava.Net>
Subject: Sigh, yet another, once again, one more time, expedition to Kawiwi

Pat and Dayle chickened out, and so it's me and "Kawiwi" Poor, and Dave Webb, against this most elusive mountain.

At least we accomplish something: there is a ridge from Waianae going straight up to Kamaileunu ridge, and we passed by Angel's junkyard and asked for and got permission. "Just park anywhere." Yeah, it's also perfectly safe: what thief would be so dumb as to steal cars from a _junkyard_?? So, some day....

Two weeks ago, I identified the ridge we were on; well, I was one ridge off: the ridge we were on should be one ridge to the right. We know, because we actually traversed to the right, and counted the ridges we crossed, and then actually came to "within 200 yards" of the ridge that goes up to 2656'.

Started at 10:35, went to the same place as last time. Except, at the big rock where we had lunch, we turned right to leave the ridge and go down into the gulch, and then contour to get to the next ridge. We then climbed to a high point with good views and stopped. In fact, this is the pinnacle to the right that was occasionally visible two weeks ago. We saw the ridge we started with, and it goes up very steeply, drops very steeply, and resumes going up very steeply. It is obviously out, except for Himalayans like Torrey maybe.

The ridge we are on looks quite bad also: the other side of the pinnacle looks vertical, and the one tree from which a rope may be attached is too much off the center. Moreover, the ridge resumes going up very steeply after the drop, and there is one rather terrifying rockface.

Next ridge over looks uniform, uniformly steep and narrow, although not overly so. It might well be doable.

Yet the next ridge over on the right IS the ridge to 2656'. It actually does not look so good now, as the heavily forested portion near the top looks very steep.

It was 1:15 when we got to the pinnacle, and we decided to have lunch. After lunch, we went down partways, and decided to continue contouring to the right (right as you go up, now actually 'left'). We found another doable contours (it's amazing, every ridge has a trail, and every ridge is connected to the neighbors by more than one contours), and after less than an hour of tiptoeing on contours and some arduous climbing, got to the next ridge, the one that is uniformly steep and narrow. This one has an extremely overgrown trail on it, i.e. it is almost an exception, there is no trail. I decided to adopt this orphan ridge, and embarked on major trail clearing to ascend the ridge. The other two continued to contour to attempt to gain the 2656' ridge.

After maybe 1/2 hour, they came back, and I came down from the orphan ridge also (I have only ascended maybe 100 feet). The two claimed that they contoured down into the valley, and decided not to attempt to go up to the 2656' ridge. Rather, they attempted to go up to the Kamaileunu-Kawiwi-Noname-Ka`ala ridge top itself from the valley. There is a rockface that is plainly visible to me from orphan ridge, but they _claim_ that it is doable.

So it's time to turn back, tracing our footsteps. They claim that the expedition is 90% done. Great! Steve "Kawiwi" has done it at least 5 times. I suggest: simply tell HTMC to make this a Club hike, and send that trail-clearing crew in there to clear all the detritus, and send Paka-Lolo+Professor to go up the Rockface to lay some cables, and then I can go on the Club hike. On that day, have Paka-Lolo and Dr. Gene do sea-level, Kamaileunu-Kawiwi-Ka`ala-down-Dupont/De Ponte, and I promise to have lunch with them on top of Kawiwi. After they go down De Ponte, Ms. Mary De Ponte will no doubt be roused from R.I.P. and embrace Paka-DiCaprio her long-lost boyfriend ....

On that note, the expedition ended and we jumped into my car for the long drive back to Waikele.

BTW, I could not resist temptation, and did buy that "Porsche" of a lopper, at Waikele, for 69 whopping bucks. Bows head in shame, as Nay-10 would say.

Wing



Reply From: "Dayle K. Turner" (turner@hawaii.edu>

Actually, Paka and I joined a bunch of HTMC folks for a kayak outing in Kaneohe Bay yesterday. This was part of our cross-training program to avoid hiker burnout, which based on the delusional ending to Wingo's post (see below) has already affected the once quite sane Dr. Ng and driven him over the proverbial edge. :-)

> and I promise to have lunch with them on top of Kawiwi.  After they
> go down De Ponte, Ms. Mary De Ponte will no doubt be roused from R.I.P.
> and embrace Paka-DiCaprio her long-lost boyfriend ....

--DKT


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