Waianae Water-Walls-Water – January 27, 2013

As mentioned in a previous post, Waianae Valley is home to a network of trails – mostly created by Waianae Steve. The short story on Waianae Steve is a man who was from Brooklyn, came to Waianae to teach, did that for 30 years, did some hunting and hiking along the way, retired, and chose to stick with hiking. His love for the valley resulted in the creation of a network of trails that in my opinion rival the network of trails in the Tantalus area.

I’ll go into the network of trails when I finally complete all the hikes in Waianae Valley. For now, the focus is on Waianae Water-Walls-Water trail. At first, I could not comprehend the name of the hike. However, after completing the hike, it totally makes sense to me.

Joining the Hawaiian Trail & Mountain Club (HTMC) hike today was a crew I was familiar with. When I first joined HTMC a few years ago, I didn’t know too many hikers. Now it seems I know a lot of people in the club, so many people that I can’t remember all their names.

Like all Waianae Valley hikes done by the HTMC, we met at Waianae Steve’s house, were debriefed, and drove to the end of Waianae Valley Road. From there, we started the dreaded paved road, but immediately veered off the road to the right following white markers into the valley. 

The trail follows Kalalua Stream; most of the vegetation are coffee plants. One of the hikers, Janice, opened one of the coffee shells and took out the bean. There was no taste, but it was good to try coffee in its purest form. We encountered a few waterfalls. The first one needed to be climbed on the right side, the second one could be bypassed via a trail on the left of the waterfall. Darren, Aprille, and I took the bypass trail because we followed the white markers heading up the ridge. When we got down from the bypass trail everyone was asking us why we didn’t go up the waterfall. Ooops! Oh well, next time. 

After the water part, the trail goes up a ridge. We encountered some rock walls, maybe living quarters of ancient Hawaii or heiau’s of ancient Hawaii. These walls were in great shape. According to Gene, these walls were post 1650 A.D. because of the architecture. Not sure if I can explain it without boring you, so just take my word for it.

The rains started the fall, which we assumed as the island was under a possible thunderstorm watch. Everyone took out their jackets. I took out my Geico poncho, which drew some chuckles. The going became slippery, but I went slowly, so did everyone else. We eventually passed the last wall and started to make a trip back to the road. For this part of the hike, we followed Kanewai Stream. This stream is also part of the Water Works hike. We booked it back to the road and waited for everyone else to finish.

The post hike meal was at Brick Oven Pizza. We gobbled up the pizza like nothing. Boy, everyone was so hungry.