Pu’u Piei – January 21, 2012

I needed to do a short hike because I had to get to a birthday party by 1pm. So I decided to do Pu’u Piei. According to Stuart Ball’s book Hiking on Oahu, Pu’u Piei is about 3 miles long. I figured it would only take 3 hours to finish this hike, so if we got to Kahana at 8a, there would be no problem.

Pu’u Piei is a high end intermediate hike. The trail goes uphill for about 1600 ft. until you hit the crest of the ridge, then its more ups and downs before you hit the summit. I had a feeling that there would be a lot of huffing and puffing.

I picked up Nate at 7 am and off I drove to Kahana valley. At 8a, we parked at the Orientation Center. As we were getting ready, Pu'u Piei was looming in front of us. We started to walk on the gravel road towards the Nakoa trailhead. We then turned right on a paved road and headed into the valley looking for utility poles, none were in sight. After about 30 minutes, we were perplexed. Where was Pu’u Piei and the utility poles? The mountain seemed to disappear. So we headed back to the Orientation center. I took out Stuart Ball’s book and we both read the section on Pu'u Piei again. After reading the description we figured that the Piei trail was before the Orientation center. So we walked down the road for a bit and made a left onto a dirt road where there were utility poles. After utility pole #3, the trail starts.

The trail enters near a dry streambed, but then it makes a left and goes uphill. The trek was a cardio workout. The ridge entered hala trees with their serrated leaves. I wore pants today just in case, but didn’t need it. There have been reports of the Piei trail being hard to follow. However, this wasn’t the case. The trail is actually easy to follow. But it's all uphill, I went at a good pace albeit huffing and puffing like someone who can't handle. In about 1 hour we hit the crest of the ridge. The view was breathtaking. Nate and I took a break, sweaty. I told Nate that according to the book, Piei is overgrown at the top, so we wouldn’t get a view. However, Nate said, "we got to do it right, we're already here". We started walking on the narrow ridge towards the summit of Piei. It was surprisingly narrow. Kalena is narrow. I stayed focused and kept my cool. There were precipitous drops to the left and right. One fall and that would be it. On the left side was Kahana Valley and to the right side is Punalu’u Valley. The walk on the narrow ridge was kind of short, so we had to worry about our safety for only a little while. At about the 1 hour 30 minute mark, we sat at the overgrown summit of Pu’u Piei. 

After a break, we made the hike back down the narrow ridge. The views were gorgeous. We hot tailed it down the ridge in no time and before exiting the trail, we took the side trail to the fish shrine called Kapa’ele’ele. Ancient Hawaiian fisherman used the shrine to ensure a good catch.