Superblog: Kulepeamoa Hike

On saturday night, Mits texted me if I wanted to do anything today, and I was up for anything. Today, I got a text around 11, and Mits asked if I wanted to go hiking around Winston's house. When we arrived, Winston showed us where we would hike. A short walk up the street, but it involved us going though private property. Just as we approached, the guy who lives there came out, and we just decided to ask him if we could go in. He wouldn't let us, so we didn't know what to do. It was around 12 and we didn't wanna waste time, so I suggested we do Kulepeamoa. After returning to the cars, we decided that I would take them because Kendall locked his keys in the car. He didn't have OnStar so there was only my car left available anyway.

It took some driving around to find the trail head. We came upon this fence that had a no trespassing sign on it; don't think that's it...driving around some more. We went into about 4 roundabouts and just kept looking down every street until...there it was - the open driveway with the chain as a gate. Only took us about 15 minutes to find it. There was parking all along the curb, so I parked close to the entrance. We geared up and got ready to go. I got to test out the D40 today and from what I saw on the camera, the pics look good. I can't upload them yet because my computer is still being retarded so they'll come up later.

Up the driveway and to a water reservoir. There were three other cars parked up the driveway, but no one was around, and we learned that there was another road down to someone's house. That road isn't the trail, and you have to go along the right side of the fence of the water reservoir. Just look for the first pink ribbon and follow that. You might want to wear long pants because there's grass that grows over your head and can give you stuff like paper cuts in the beginning and uluhe ferns that cut up your legs later on. However, it can get hot so pack some shorts for the parts clear of those demon plants. You cross a dry stream bed and follow the ribbons up the mountain on a pretty steep trail. After going through the grass, you go through a forest, which opens up to a big dirt hill. You can go up the hill or follow the ribbons. Either way, you'll end up on the correct trail. From the dirt hill, it's all steep uphill climbing. You'll get to a part covered in pines where you can rest, but the trail continues on with even more steep ups and some downs. About 3/4 the way in, there's a rope section that would be really hard to climb if you didn't have the rope. It's a near vertical climb, and if you fall, you'll go tumbling down. Don't trust the rope too much, but always keep a hand on it because the dirt is loose and you could slip. After the rope section, you climb up and down some more sections before finally reaching the top of Kulepeamoa. In front of you at the summit are Waimanalo, Lanikai, Makapu'u, Kaneohe, Kailua, all that good stuff and of course Olomana, the hike Mits and I just did yesterday.

So the descent back down had us slipping and sliding on the loose dirt. We grabbed onto anything near for stability. It took us about an hour and a half to get back to the car from the top after about 2 hours of climbing to get to the top. No one ate lunch because we didn't expect to hike Kulepeamoa, so we hit up Zippys after and had some food. Winston hadn't hiked anything like that before so he wasn't in shape for it, but he made it all the way. He went to Maunawili with us before, so he had been on a hike, but today's steep, four hour hike was a lot more than Maunawili. It was a pretty fun weekend making us ask, what's next?

I had a piece of dust on the sensor that day so the pictures that are brighter in the middle have a noticeable gray spot on them. I fixed the camera but I'll need to go in photoshop and fix all the bad pics later. I tried to pick pictures that didn't show the annoying dot.