Waimalu Ditch Trail - January 28, 2017 

For some reason I wanted to do this trail again. It was because we are anticipated to do the Waimalu Meadow next week. However, the people going on the hike next week didn't want to do the hike today. I thought they would like to do the Ditch trail to relive memories of the past, but I guess not. 

Joining the hike today was Sensei, DJ and Shell. That was it! The meeting time was at 8:15am at Onikiniki Place. I always called it Okinikini Place for some reason. Shell and I had no snacks in the house, so we stopped at 7-11 to grab spam musubi's. I swear it is getting expensive. A few musubis, doughnuts, and gummy bears were over $10. 

Shell and I had to get back for Aunty Laurie's dinner at 5pm. I predicted a 5 hour hike. If we followed the plan, we would have enough time to eat at our favorite Aiea place: Shiro's. 

Waimalu Ditch has some distance, it's about a 7 mile hike. Although elevation changes aren't drastic, the blow downs today would turn out to be somewhat of a problem. 

We met DJ and Sensei at the end of Onikiniki Place. I wanted to take silk with my tripod today, which meant that I had to lug my 6 lbs tripod through the trail. 

Like I said, the hike is gradual. We hiked at an average place considering the obstacles of the blow downs. Oahu had heavy winds within the last couple of weeks and it broke a lot of branches and uprooted a lot of trees on this trail. 

In about 45 minutes, we hit Little Waimalu falls. It was dry as a bone today. My idea of taking silk was shattered. The trail switched to the other side of a ridge and we continued for 1 more hour until we hit the stream. The overgrowth near the stream wasn't good, making me think that next week's hike down Waimalu Ridge probably won't be a good idea. 

At the bottom of the stream, we took out our spam musubi's and started eating it. It tastes so good!!! I'm going to bring spam musubi's on the hike next week. I kinda wanted to turn around at this point so we would have enough time to go back and eat lunch at Shiro's, be it that we have dinner at 5pm. But group consensus was to get to the HTMC spot further down the stream. We proceeded further down stream and after about 40 minutes through some strong hau tangle and a total of 8  stream crossing, we got to the HTMC spot. I went upstream to find the Waimalu Middle Ridge, but couldn't remember where it was and had to head back. 

The stream was very relaxing and can take the stress off. After a nice break, we headed back the way we came. Going back was harder because it was uphill. But Shell led a good pace back and we finished the hike in about 6.5 hours. We were all tired. PHM was out of the question now because it was late. We said goodbye to DJ and Sensei and went to 7-11 again. We bought sushi and slurpees. It was so good!!!

At home, we got ready very quickly and headed towards the same place, Waimalu, to Gyotaku for Aunty Laurie's dinner. Everyone was there! It was a great evening. We had a lot of conversations and caught up. Can you believe Dean just graduated college and Taylor is a senior in high school? Wow!!! I remember the day Dean was born. On the way home we weren't tired, we were probably overtired, but that is okay because Sunday is open and we can relax.