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Waipio/Honokaa area of North Kohala
Mar. 22nd, 2010 03:39 pmThe next part of our trip is on the eastern side of Hawaii's northermost point—about 1 o'clock on the dial. We moved into the Waipio Wayside Inn early, and after dumping our bags, headed off hiking. To get to the day's hike, we drove over the Kohala Mountain Road, with a steep rise to about 3500 feet above the ocean and many winding, twisty roads giving spectacular views of the ocean and deep valleys in the inland direction. (Shoshanna drove one way and I drove on the way home so we could both have a chance to rubberneck without driving off a precipice.)
This part of the country is wet and lush, and it's been much longer since lava flowed here (a few thousand years in places), so the soils are deeper and the vegetation has had much more time to grow. From a speeding car, many parts resemble rural parts of Quebec and New England (i.e., rolling fields, cattle, thick forests of broadleaved or coniferous trees or a mixture)—as all ecologists know, form follows function. But if you look closely (particularly when you get out and walk), the vegetation is clearly different: eucalypts and palms where we would have pines and spruces and maples, for instance. And the soil ranges from deep deposits that resemble the familiar soils of eastern North America to solid lava that is weathered to a deep brown that only resembles soil.
We spent a few hours doing the short but demanding Pololu Valley hike. You hike down a steep slope (a cliff face in places) for an elevation change of about 500 feet along a series of switchbacks until you reach the seashore. The downhill part of the hike isn't too strenuous, but was quite tricky this time because the unfinished path is covered by a surface of clay-like soil and it had just rained, making the footing treacherous for us old folks. (We cleverly forgot our walking sticks back at the B&B; they would have helped greatly.) We overheard a local who was taking one of his guests on this walk comment that when it gets really wet, you have to crawl back to the top on hands and knees.
The view on the way down and at the bottom was gorgeous: on one side, a lush valley brimming with green vegetation and the deeply incised lava slopes you so often see in pictures of Hawaii, and on the other, sheer cliff faces being pounded by surf. In between, a black-sand beach piled high with driftwood and other flotsam. Shoshanna enjoys sandy toes and salt (I don't), so she went and dipped her feet in the water. I hiked along the beach, found a convenient driftwood "bench", parked my butt, and enjoyed the waves and the play of light and shadow in the forest behind the beach.
Hiking back up the hill was much easier, but it was hot and humid and unpleasant. As it turned out it was good training for the following day, when we planned to hike the Waipio Valley. This is a similar valley farther south along the same stretch of coast, but a much longer and steeper descent; we estimated 1000 feet or so from the topo map, and a grade of about 20%. The guidebooks describe it as a real "thigh burner", and they weren't kidding. Going down is hard on the muscles around the knees, and returning is deadly for the thighs. Hard on the ankles too, since in some places, the slope is steep enough you almost can't comfortably bend your ankle enough to walk straight uphill. (Or maybe that's just me... old ankle injury.) It was hot and humid, with very little breeze in most stretches, so we made many stops—ostensibly to admire the scenery, which was indeed admirable, but mostly to catch our breath and rehydrate.
Waipio Valley is a deep volcanic valley, with steep sides incised by erosion channels and coated with dense vegetation. This valley was traditionally heavily populated because of the deep and fertile soils at the bottom and the abundant water, but most of the people living here were killed by a tsunami that struck the valley in the 1940s. The people would have had nowhere to go (in the absence of a prepared hiking trail, it would take hours, not minutes, to climb to any significant height, and with the sound of running water and the wind in the trees, it's doubtful you'd even hear the wave before it hit you. Even if you did receive some advance warning, climbing above the wave would have been nearly impossible: the valley is shaped like a funnel, and would have concentrated the waves until they scoured far up the slopes. So it was a beautiful but vaguely sinister place. People live there now, and there is a tsunami warning system, but it would still be touch and go escaping if you didn't get a lot of warning.
There were many small birds, most of which we didn't see other than in glimpses through the branches, but we saw a small grey heron flap past and a small white heron or egret combing through the grass looking for lunch. We also saw what I at first thought was a weasel or marten, but what we later learned was probably a mongoose: about the size of a small skunk or very large squirrel, but with a narrow bottle-brush tail, a weaselly curve of the spine, and ginger fur. The mongoose was imported in an early attempt at biological control of the rats that arrived with Europeans, but unfortunately whichever unsung idiot who made this choice did not bother to study the ecology of either species before settling on this plan. Mongooses are only active during the day, and rats are primarily active at night, so the two rarely cross paths. Instead of controlling the rats, the mongooses started eliminating native birds.
We were pretty much exhausted by the time we made it home to the B&B, but that was okay because our afternoon and evening plan was to head up the slopes of Mauna Kea volcano to watch the sun set from nearly 14 thousand feet above sea level. I'll post about that later today; Shoshanna is eager to get going.
This part of the country is wet and lush, and it's been much longer since lava flowed here (a few thousand years in places), so the soils are deeper and the vegetation has had much more time to grow. From a speeding car, many parts resemble rural parts of Quebec and New England (i.e., rolling fields, cattle, thick forests of broadleaved or coniferous trees or a mixture)—as all ecologists know, form follows function. But if you look closely (particularly when you get out and walk), the vegetation is clearly different: eucalypts and palms where we would have pines and spruces and maples, for instance. And the soil ranges from deep deposits that resemble the familiar soils of eastern North America to solid lava that is weathered to a deep brown that only resembles soil.
We spent a few hours doing the short but demanding Pololu Valley hike. You hike down a steep slope (a cliff face in places) for an elevation change of about 500 feet along a series of switchbacks until you reach the seashore. The downhill part of the hike isn't too strenuous, but was quite tricky this time because the unfinished path is covered by a surface of clay-like soil and it had just rained, making the footing treacherous for us old folks. (We cleverly forgot our walking sticks back at the B&B; they would have helped greatly.) We overheard a local who was taking one of his guests on this walk comment that when it gets really wet, you have to crawl back to the top on hands and knees.
The view on the way down and at the bottom was gorgeous: on one side, a lush valley brimming with green vegetation and the deeply incised lava slopes you so often see in pictures of Hawaii, and on the other, sheer cliff faces being pounded by surf. In between, a black-sand beach piled high with driftwood and other flotsam. Shoshanna enjoys sandy toes and salt (I don't), so she went and dipped her feet in the water. I hiked along the beach, found a convenient driftwood "bench", parked my butt, and enjoyed the waves and the play of light and shadow in the forest behind the beach.
Hiking back up the hill was much easier, but it was hot and humid and unpleasant. As it turned out it was good training for the following day, when we planned to hike the Waipio Valley. This is a similar valley farther south along the same stretch of coast, but a much longer and steeper descent; we estimated 1000 feet or so from the topo map, and a grade of about 20%. The guidebooks describe it as a real "thigh burner", and they weren't kidding. Going down is hard on the muscles around the knees, and returning is deadly for the thighs. Hard on the ankles too, since in some places, the slope is steep enough you almost can't comfortably bend your ankle enough to walk straight uphill. (Or maybe that's just me... old ankle injury.) It was hot and humid, with very little breeze in most stretches, so we made many stops—ostensibly to admire the scenery, which was indeed admirable, but mostly to catch our breath and rehydrate.
Waipio Valley is a deep volcanic valley, with steep sides incised by erosion channels and coated with dense vegetation. This valley was traditionally heavily populated because of the deep and fertile soils at the bottom and the abundant water, but most of the people living here were killed by a tsunami that struck the valley in the 1940s. The people would have had nowhere to go (in the absence of a prepared hiking trail, it would take hours, not minutes, to climb to any significant height, and with the sound of running water and the wind in the trees, it's doubtful you'd even hear the wave before it hit you. Even if you did receive some advance warning, climbing above the wave would have been nearly impossible: the valley is shaped like a funnel, and would have concentrated the waves until they scoured far up the slopes. So it was a beautiful but vaguely sinister place. People live there now, and there is a tsunami warning system, but it would still be touch and go escaping if you didn't get a lot of warning.
There were many small birds, most of which we didn't see other than in glimpses through the branches, but we saw a small grey heron flap past and a small white heron or egret combing through the grass looking for lunch. We also saw what I at first thought was a weasel or marten, but what we later learned was probably a mongoose: about the size of a small skunk or very large squirrel, but with a narrow bottle-brush tail, a weaselly curve of the spine, and ginger fur. The mongoose was imported in an early attempt at biological control of the rats that arrived with Europeans, but unfortunately whichever unsung idiot who made this choice did not bother to study the ecology of either species before settling on this plan. Mongooses are only active during the day, and rats are primarily active at night, so the two rarely cross paths. Instead of controlling the rats, the mongooses started eliminating native birds.
We were pretty much exhausted by the time we made it home to the B&B, but that was okay because our afternoon and evening plan was to head up the slopes of Mauna Kea volcano to watch the sun set from nearly 14 thousand feet above sea level. I'll post about that later today; Shoshanna is eager to get going.