Dec 28, 2019
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With: | Ryan Harriman |
This was a short morning hike, two actually, on the west side of Oahu. Jackie was supposed to join us but wasn't feeling well, so it ended up just Ryan and I.
Finding the start of the Ohikilolo Ridge Trail took some work. The whole east side of the highway north of the cave is signed for Restricted Area, federal lands. This seems to be routinely ignored. There are more than one unsigned use trails leading into the squat forested area off the road. These faint trails criss-cross the lightly forested lower slopes, and one sort of has to trust the trail to get you where you want to go. We watched another group head in just before us, so it made it easy to find an entrance. It seems there is a second, upper cave that has been over-Instagram-ized to which the other visitors we came across were looking for. We worked our way up to the cliff face where a good use goes right towards the upper cave. We made our way left and then up further, climbing steeply through a few wet class 3 steps, eventually emerging on the ridgeline above where we were met by the expected pig fence. This fence continues up for several mile following along the ridge. After a short break, we continued up the ridge, using the fence for balance and holds, following a thin trail alongside the fence. We went up past the Makua 2 survey monument, stopping at the highest point before the ridge drops down to a saddle. It was easy to see how one could spend hours continuing up the ridgeline, climbing several more thousand feet to the summit of Ohikilolo, well out of view from our vantage point. We took in the views north and south, a pretty stretch of coastline with very little development. After our rest, we headed back down the same way, a little more careful on the descent due to the slickness of the wet rock faces. There were several parties we came across in the lower reaches, asking for directions to the cave. At the time we didn't know about the upper cave so were of no help. Only afterwards did I look it up online to see what was drawing people to this lonely area.
Continued...
This page last updated: Sun Dec 29 18:37:32 2019
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