Waialae Nui to Lanipo – June 5, 2013

Last year I tried and failed. Then The Not So Great Hiker posted a successful attempt of Waialae Nui, and then Laredo and Quyen did it. Then it appeared no one did it for nearly a year, until recently when J and Ras did it. Where am I going with this? Simple. Do Waialae Nui!

The plan today was for me to go up Lanipo, crossover on the Ko’olau Summit Ridge to the Waialae Nui Terminus (like I did last year), bushwhack the living daylights out of Waialae Nui Ridge, find a side trail down to the gulch, and then go up a side trail to reconnect with Lanipo to create a big loop. I was worried about the bushwhacking, but Jay told me there is a swath I could follow. I asked others if they wanted to go, but in the end, I was solo. I’ve done Lanipo twice, both times solo. It’s the only trail I’ve done multiple times solo, besides the menial Aiea Loop trail.

I dropped my kids off at school and headed towards Sierra Drive in the Waialae area. I went up Wilhelmina Rise towards the Lanipo trailhead. I started at 8:45am. As I was hiking, a thought entered my head. Should I go down into the valley first, do the hard and unknown stuff first, and finish up on Lanipo? Boy that thought sounded good. Forty five minutes into the hike, the junction appeared down into the valley. I took it. There was no looking back.

The descent down into the valley was a little difficult. Although there were ribbons, the terrain was unstable because of the infinite amount of loose rocks and brittle trees. However, it may have only taken me 15 minutes to get near the bottom, so I followed a stream bed (or wash out) that led to a number of dry waterfall chutes. I climbed down 4 small waterfall chutes. The big problem now was the lack of trail and overgrowth. I had to contort my body to get through the brush. Once I got down to the stream bed, the mosquitoes were all over the place, I've never seen so many mosquitoes before. I took my insect repellent out and sprayed myself thoroughly, luckily there’s a good percentage of deet in the spray making the mosquitoes fly away from me.

The stream bed was easy to follow, and I was only in the valley for about 10 minutes before finding the path up to Waialae Nui Ridge. My body was tired already because of the descent from the Lanipo trail, so I took a bunch of breaks going up towards Waialae Nui Ridge. The ascent is steep, but nothing out of the ordinary.

As I neared the crest, I was worried about coming out into the open, where the millionaire’s yard was. The reason behind Waialae Nui’s closing (in the 90s) was access problems. The problem is that the millionaire's driveway is also part of the service road that leads to a water tank; I guess they share the road or something. Urban legend goes that some hiker killed the millionaire’s dog, so he doesn’t want hikers coming through that road anymore.

The trail does a good job of staying in the forest, making it impossible for the millionaire to see a hiker. After passing the property, I came out into the open. This was awesome I told myself, plus there was a well defined trail. I was so happy that I finally got a chance to hike Waialae Nui. Initially the trail is defined with some strawberry guava overgrowth. I blazed it as fast as I could, because I knew the uluhe would come into play and take most of my time. In about 30 minutes, the uluhe showed up in all its glory, swallowing up the trail. I was wearing shorts, but took them off, and put on my army pants. The first hour of bushwhacking was exhausting. The sun was beaming, making me take many breaks. Then the trail opened up for a bit over a narrow rocky dike (not Kalena narrow though), but not very long as the uluhe came into play again. At about 2 ½ hours, the rains came. I was so grateful. First, I was running low on water, so the rain would lower my temp. Second, the rain seemed to loosen the uluhe making it much easier for me to push through. Waialae Nui Ridge is gentle for the most part, not too many ups and downs, until the end, and then it’s mostly all ups. There were a few false peaks, reaching them one by one became demoralizing as I could see I needed to go up another peak. One good thing at this point was the swath. Too bad I was so exhausted to make good time of the swath. 

There’s another ridge that connects to Waialae Nui before it terminates. If you're coming from the top down make sure you take the ridge that forks right or else you’ll be going down one hell of a spur ridge.

After the two ridges connect, the ridge narrows considerably, almost finger-like. The ridge is not narrow by experienced hiker’s standards, but there are major drops to both sides. The swath was excellent as I made my way to the summit and its small clearing. I marked it on my gps and made the left on the Ko’olau Summit because time was of the essence, it was about 3:15pm.

The entire mountain was socked in. In about 5 minutes, I passed the Lanipo Windward trail, it was so wide open. If someone did this section of the Ko’olau Summit Ridge, I bet they would take that trail by mistake, especially in these socked in conditions. I of course knew better. I continued further as the rains came down hard. Normally, I hate the rain, but today was the perfect time for it. It really, really lowered my temp. Every time the rains came down hard, I opened my mouth to get some water; I only had ½ a liter left and still didn’t get to Kainawa’aunui yet. Finally, after about 40 minutes, I hit the summit of Kainawa’aunui, put on my spikes and tried to get the hell out of there.

The trail is well defined, but the confusing part of the trail is that it’s called Mau’umae Ridge. The summit is called Kainawa’aunui. But the trail as a whole is referred to as Lanipo. Many hikers mistake the Kainawa’aunui summit as Lanipo, which I did in 2011. If you want to know why these names happened, I suggest to get a copy of Stuart Ball’s new book, Native Paths to Volunteer Trails, there is a section on Lanipo in that book.

After about 45 minutes, I hit the uluhe section. If the trail is ever to close one day, in my opinion, it would become impassible. This uluhe section grows so fast in such a short amount of time that it would gobble up the trail in a heartbeat. HTMC clears it once or twice a year, and the Sierra club also does some clearing. Even with all the extra help, the uluhe starts to connect within a matter of months.

The sun was about to go down in an hour as I was about to exit. I passed a pretty girl walking her dog; she was startled to see me covered in mud, gloves on, microspikes on, and a big pack. I said hi to her, but not much more. Before I got to my car, I took a long break at one of the rocky sections near the trailhead. I just needed to relax before making the long drive home in traffic.

The hike took over 9 hours, but it was well worth it. In hindsight, the change of plans by dropping into the valley was the right move; or else, I may have had to navigate the valley in the dark. There have been talks about clearing the Waialae Nui trail, but honestly who is going to do it? Access is limited. My adventure today has proven that getting to the ridge is difficult. It’ll take a very determined crew to clear it.