Hala'i
Pu'u Honu

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Today was a travel day, Tom and I heading to the big island while Iris was going home to the mainland. Our flights weren't until afternoon so we thought we might do some sort of hike in the morning. I had come up with an idea that Iris was quite excited about - swimming across Lihue harbor to climb a summit found on the other side. It wasn't a completely crazy idea, but we decided against it after driving down to the harbor and checking the conditions. It was windy and the water a bit rough, but the bigger probem was the landing on the other side. There was no open shoreline to walk along to where we could access the easier route to our summit. The harbor has several kayak rental places that we inquired at, but they would only allow kayaks to be taken upriver, not across the harbor where we wanted to go. In the end we decided to go back to our motel, pack, do laundry and have lunch. Sometimes that's the way it goes.

Upon arriving in Hilo in the late afternoon, Tom and I got our rental jeep and headed out to tag a few minor summits in the area before checking into our hotel. Neither of these showed any ascents on PB or LoJ, so we were pretty much winging it based on satellite views which served us well.

Hala'i

This old volcanic vent has a rusty telecom installation at the summit. A gated road going to the summit is found at the end of Ulili St. A simple cable blocks vehicles, but it is easy to park there and walk to the top. We were lucky to have a mostly unobstructed view of Mauna Kea to the northwest and were even able to see the collection of telescopes at the summit. Ulili's crater can be viewed during the short hike to the summit, filled with jungle vegetation and surrounded on three sides by homes. It looks like the partially hidden crater would make a fine playground for the neighborhood kids.

Pu'u Honu

Located less than a mile west of Hala'i, this is another volcanic vent now covered in vegetation. The shortest access is from the east along Komohana St. A gated entrance leads to some rusting construction equipment, the site of an old (maybe still active) quarry of some sort. The chainlink gate is flimsy and not very climable, so we looked for another way. About 100yds further south is another driveway ending abruptly in over-the-head tall grasses. We parked across the street at some medical office buildings and then plowed our way through about 10yds of very thick grass to reach more open terrain on the other side. We followed roads in the quarry to the southeast side, getting within about 0.12mi of the summit before having to jump back into the jungle cross-country. We managed this with failing light, a tough effort with more tall grasses an thick jungle understory, eventually finding what we judged to be the highpoint after nearly exhausting ourselves. No views of any kind were to be had. Our saving grace was the easier return, thanks to the half-trail we had created in our plowing through the stuff. Good fun, but a lot of work for a simple summit.

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