Kalihi Ice Ponds Hike
Ice Ponds of Kalihi Valley - June 13, 2011
I was reading Joshua blog 808 Goonies yesterday and stumbled upon a secret trail that led to cascading waterfalls. Wow very impressive. Its called the Ice Ponds. Why Ice Ponds? Its not frozen. Two local stories exist. 1) Its a place of gathering for tweakers smoking Ice (Crystal Meth), not too appealing. 2) The stream is cold as ice. I guess the urban legend yields many stories.
On this day I went with my wife Michelle. The initial plan was to only take her out to lunch, but I threw in a hike because of my recent addiction. Though she resisted, I persuaded her enough to at least come along. We headed toward Kalihi Street at 9:30 am. I had no specific directions, but a source on the internet provided some coordinates to the Ice Ponds. The night before, I inputted the coordinates into google map and a location popped up. With that to work on, we headed deep into the valley.
We parked near the end of Kalihi Street a little after 10:00 am and started walking on the road. A few minutes later appeared a locked gate with a No Trespassing sign. Looks like Board of Water Supply property again. We went around the fence and continued on. The walk to the Ice Ponds is about 40-45 minutes depending on your pace. It was wet, so we went slow.
We got to the trail leading down to the valley floor. It looked steep and it was. There were ropes to assist, but it was too damn slippery. So Michelle stayed back, while I pressed on. As I was going down a crew of at least 8 young adults were coming up. I found an area to wait for them as they made their trek up the mountain. They had some trouble tackling the slippery slope. One of the girls slipped and slid down the mountain. Luckily, her friends were there to grab her before she went over the ledge. I chatted with some of the guys while they waited their turn to use the rope going up the mountain. I asked them if there was a shorter way to the Ice Ponds, but they used the same route we did. When I got down to the valley floor, I was impressed at the set up of the Ice Ponds. All I could say was Wow! There it was, indeed it did cascade. There were ropes to assist the climb up the first waterfall, but I decided to head back up the hill because Michelle was waiting. Next time, I'm going to definitely go up the first waterfall. The first waterfall is a little higher than 15 feet.
I went back up the mountain with little problem and Michelle and I headed back to the car. The total hike took us a little less than 1 1/2 hours, it would of been longer if we stayed and ate a snack at the waterfall. We headed toward the freeway and got off on the 6th Avenue off ramp. The restaurant I took Michelle out to was called TOWN. It features local ingredients and fusion type food. Italian food mixed with local food and other types of cultural food. I ordered the pork shoulder and Michelle ordered the Penne Pasta. Food was average. For dessert we ordered a Pretzel Chocolate Tart, sounded interesting and the concept was. A combination of sweet and salty taste kind of played with the palate. However, the dessert was average. I had some Spanish red wine, which makes you happy and apparently sleepy as I knocked out on the way home.
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