OHE May 16, 1998

Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 23:00:21 -1000
From: Wing C Ng (wing@lava.net>
Subject: Keaau trilogy

For the third Saturday, I went hike Keaau. Three of us, me, Steve Poor and Steve Becker, went up Skipole trail to Keaau 2, and then turned right to reach Puu Keaau (main peak), and turned back to reach Keaau Burns, and thence down to the ocean. Some trilogy.

Skipole trail was uneventful until the point where I gave up last time. Patrick marked the route to the left. At the last ribbon, it seems one can go up climbing some rocks, or can go around contouring around a large hill. Neither seems desirable, and so we decided to backtrack and go straight up the rock. Two of us made it up ok, and super-cautious Steve Poor wants to tie himself around a rope and have me belay him up, which of course I only read a book about before. Fortunately he did get up with no problem.

The rock was about the same difficulty as the rock on Olomana 1st peak without the cable. That was moreover the only exciting part about Skipole trail. The rest is quite easy, which is amazing, considering how radical the route looks from the watertank below.

We got to Keaau 2 in 2 h 50 m, as we spent some 45 minutes fooling around with that rock. Right turn and 35 m later, we returned to Puu Keaau. Nothing much changed, and the ribbon we tied two weeks ago was still bright red.

After lunch we followed Keaau ridge down, and got to Burns in 1 h 10 m. From there we retraced my steps last Sat., and reached the ocean in 1 h 20 m.

It has been a great, wonderful hike. Steve Poor thinks that it should be a HTMC club hike.

Wing


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