Superblog: Wiliwilinui hike

So another hike on the list is Wiliwilinui. Originally, Kendall showed us this trail that's a 5 minute drive from his house. We went on Dec 22, 2008 and again on Dec 27. We had to get past a guard but Kendall had a sticker on his car so they let him in. Also, you can just tell the guard that you're going hiking on the wiliwilinui trail and they should let you in. The first time we went, Kendall took me and Mits, and there were no clouds in the sky. Kendall told us that the weather is retarded and will change everyday.

On the trail, the ground was kind of slippery and I didn't go up in slippers this time :-). You hike over and down a bunch of hills and then you get to the real part of the Wiliwilinui trail. There's lots of planks set in the ground, so they're like stairs and the climb is pretty steep. After a good amount of stairs, you get to the rope section that's even steeper. The ropes are more for coming back down, but i crab walked back down and made it without the ropes. After the ropes you get to a relay station at the top. I read about it on Bonny Doon's site. He works on those kind of towers-the kind up high or in the mountains-and took pics of what's inside. Not that interesting but it tells people like me, who wanna know what's in it, what's in it. If you wanna know too, you can check it out here. So past the station, the trail continues and we honestly weren't gonna go up there until we saw someone come back down with his dog. It looked like a chihuahua and didn't seem to be scared or tired at all. We asked him what it was like and he said it's amazing. Because we were curious, and didn't wanna be outdone by a little dog, we decided we'd go up. It was worth it because the view was awesome and we made it to the end of the trail mark. And at the end of the trail mark, you could see all across the other side of the island. We actually spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out what was what up there.

There's two more trails that lead left or right from the end of the trail mark and we didn't feel like going there that day but we'll come back and do it eventually. To the right, the next peak blocks the view of Koko Head and Rabbit Island. After we had fun and took pics up there we headed back down...down the trail past the relay tower and down the ropes, then we actually ran back because of the downhill going back. The whole hike was about 3 hours in all and we've been there once more. That second time, Kendall was in Korea and it was me, mits, jared, kaci, and robyn. Kaci and robyn didn't go up the ropes but it was rainy and slippery that day so it was a good idea for them not to. The clouds were covering the top of the mountain so it was cold and we couldn't see anything at the end of the trail so we didnt spend that much time up there. To give you an idea of the wind up there, we started throwing craisins straight out in front of us and they blew back and hit us in the face. So i don't think any of the craisins actually made it down to the bottom.

As with koko head, I don't know when we're going up again, if we're going at all so here's some pics from before.