Hidden Valleys: The Thrill of Hiking Places Rarely Seen
Over the summer, I decided that I wanted to really explore Hawai`i, the Big Island where I live. After vacations to distant places, I knew that just a car ride away lies Hawai`i’s own magnificent tourist destination, one of the most spectacular places in this world, the valleys of the Waipi`o coast.
Both Waipi`o Valley, on the southeastern end of the chain of valleys, and Polulu, on the northwest, are easily accessible by car. People can drive up and gaze over the dramatic landscapes or take a short walk to the valley floors. I wanted to do more than that – to hike far away and explore places rarely seen. From Waipi`o and Pololu lookouts, you can get a tiny glimpse of the mouths of a few of the other valleys, and I always longed to be in all of them, these practically forgotten, hard-to-reach areas. My father would tell me stories of the incredibly sharp and steep V-shaped cliffs of Honopue, how Honokane Nui splits into two valleys at the back, where a man-made tunnel, hundreds of feet long connects them, and how you can walk in that damp tunnel to the other side, following a faint spot of light toward the end. It was my fantasy to be in the back of a valley, with an enormous waterfall crashing by my camp. So, before school would take all of my free time, I decided to hike the Kohala Ditch trail.
With permission from the Chalon Corporation and the Sproats who live and own areas on the trail, my father and I started from the top of Pololu. We went back, farther and farther, going under waterfalls and getting lost often because of an overgrown, seldom-hiked path. We set up camp that night right under a steep side at the very back of Pololu, where constant clouds covered the `ohi`a and kukui trees, and torrents of rain continuously flooded us, disappeared, only to return, over and over.
The second day, from the top ridge between Pololu and the next valley, Honokane Nui, we could see beautiful views of the valley floors spreading out to the sea. The ridge tops always had incredible lookout points, windy areas where you could see bird’s eye views of the tremendous valleys, thousands of feet below you.
Honokane Nui was the longest valley we would hike. As we climbed and dropped into it, all we could see at the back was more folding slopes dissolving into mist. At the bottom we crossed the river 13 times to reach our campsite, and it was difficult to trudge along overgrown grass with the extra weight of soaking hiking boots that would stay wet for the rest of the trip. We got completely lost because the enormous waterfall that we would camp by had mysteriously dried up, and so we just went on, farther back into the valley, searching for it around each bend. My father finally realized that the waterfall he had remembered from trips back here decades ago was gone. We camped in a rare flat spot that night, not sure where the trail was, and not sure if we would have to go back.
The next day we grudgingly put on wet clothes, socks, and boots, and set off without packs to find the trail in the thicket. After about an hour, and almost at the point of giving up, my dad found a small path that seemed to go up the slope. We set off on it, but because there were so many landslides on the trail, we resolved that if there were a large landslide, we would not risk falling thousands of feet to go around the rubble, and instead, would turn back. Fortunately, there were only small landslides. As we were climbing out of that valley I felt sad because, since the trail was so terrible, I might never see the back of that valley again.
After leaving Honokane Nui, we dropped down into Honokane Iki, and had a little adventure. We had to cross the river on the valley floor, and the only way to do so seemed to be a small, ancient bridge, 30 feet above the water. It looked rather fragile, despite having ferns, grass and even a little tree growing on it. So we decided to be safe. We went off-trail, and picked our way down a steep side of boulders and rocks, crossed the river and crawled back up to the trail. Curiously, I poked a stick at one of the sides of the bridge and, with little effort, the stick made a hole through the rotting wood. It would have definitely collapsed if we’d tried to cross, sending us and our backpacks into the water and down the stream, at the most remote part of our trip.
We got lost again on the ridge between Honokane Iki and Honoke`a, where there were so many pig trails that we spent an hour following wrong trails. My father never saw a pig during the trip, even though the place is full of them. I did, though. I was walking along ahead of my dad, and all of a sudden he said, “Stop.” I froze and looked up; a few feet ahead of me was a pig that snorted and ran off into the bushes. When all was clear I turned to my father, all excited about seeing a wild pig. But he, on the other hand, didn’t see it at all, he had just told me to stop to look at a special kind of plant that lives only in that area.
Because my hiking boots were rubbing my ankles raw, we decided not to go to the valley of Honopue, and instead, camped at mouth of Honokane Iki. I was exhausted, overexerted and in pain, so it was the most wonderful feeling to finally lie down and rest. The hardest part of the hike was over.
In the morning, we only had to hike over the ridges of Honokane Iki and Honokane Nui, which are not as high by the sea as they are inland. It was our last day, and I was sad to have to leave the beautiful natural landscape and return to civilization, which, all of a sudden, seemed so much uglier to me.
As we climbed out, nature gave me a spectacular last hurrah when, on the top of a ridge, we were caught in a storm coming in from the ocean. The rain flew up vertically from the bottom of the valley because the wind was so powerful and I jumped around and spread my arms out, marveling at Hawai`i and how inconceivably beautiful and precious it all is.
— Emma Yuen
Volume 11, Number 4 October 2000
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