Almost Paradise

Chris, Kirk, Jayson, Chris, and I hiked the Pu‘u Pia trail on Labor Day. (I’ve been lazy and didn’t write it up until tonight.) Pu‘u Pia is a small hill in Mānoa Valley. It’s a short easy trail, just right for a couple of hours of pleasant walking.

The trailhead starts at the end of a short private road off of Alani Drive, behind the Chinese Cemetery in the back of the valley. We stepped off the paved driveway and were immediately in a wet, tall-canopied forest.

The footing was a little muddy and slippery — but hey, if you’re in Mānoa Valley, it’s expected, right? It’s always raining there. We stopped to examine the rusted skeleton of an old car just off the trail. How did it get here? Who decided to drive it off the road and abandon it back in the woods? There must be a story there waiting to be told.

The muddy trail held lots of footprints. Sneakers, slippers, hiking boots, the clawed marks of dog tracks… and this unmistakable cloven-hooved pig print. Damn pigs.

We came to a small stream crossing, which would have been a piece of cake — except for the huge eucalyptus tree that had fallen right over the trail. What to do? We argued over whether the faint trail to the left was any better than the faint trail to the right. One went up through some brush, then down; the other dipped down to cross the stream via a bare muddy slope. We split up and tried both.

Fiddlewood, a weedy shrub, above clumps of uluhe.

I think this is halapepe.

As we climbed, our view got better and better. We could see the open lawns of Lyon Arboretum at the back of the valley.

Chris and Jayson, lost in conversation, lagged behind.

The constant gusty winds at the top of Pu‘u Pia seem to have bent this koa tree all the way over.

When they got to the top, they stopped to take pictures and admire the view.

You could see almost 360 degrees around: ‘ewa towards Tantalus…

…mauka towards the Ko‘olau…

…and makai towards Waikīkī.

We admired the view, had a bite to eat, then headed back down the trail to have lunch at Taishōken. A relaxing morning.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Hiking/Outdoors, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.