Hiking Trails on Oahu

Castle-Olympus (try) - December 28, 2014 With the year coming to a close, I got invited to do a hike with the legendary Red Baron. Earlier in the week he assembled a crew to try and find the famous Old Historic Castle-Olympus trail. This hike peaked my curiosity as its the kind of thing I'm into. I have a shitload of old trails that I want to do, but with the OAG crew doing the money hikes, lots of my projects are put on the back burner. But its all good, because sooner or later, the OAG's will be ready to join me and tackle these old trails that are in disuse.  One source of information for Castle-Olympus is found on page 38 of Stuart Ball's  Native Paths to Volunteer Trails  book. According to the book in 1910 William Castle wanted to build a trail from the top of Tantalus to Konahuanui. Today this is known as the Konahuanui route. William Castle paid HTMC founder Alexander Ford to build the trail while he and his wife left the islands to do a world tour. Ford...

Manana-Waimano - December 26, 2014 This hike was the original HTMC super hike. About 14 years ago, HTMC, created a super hike which connected two of the longest state trails. Now days strong hikers seem to make the super hike a regularity. Although the crossover is short, the length of both Manana and Waimano can be grueling and time consuming. In any case, we wanted to see Pu'u Eleao in all its glory.  Because Thursday was a super clear day and most likely the same weather today, it became a no brainer and we had to do it. Joining the hike was OAG's Bernice, Darren, Erik, & Aprille. Our goal today was to see Eleao in what I claimed the 'best view on the island'. It would not disappoint.  Staging of the cars was simple ~ meet at end of Waimano Road before the guard shack, stage Erik's car there, and then Bernice would shuttle us over to the end of Komo Mai Drive near the Manana trailhead. I remember starting my backcountry app at 6:49am. Every time I do a waypoi...

Chinatown - December 22, 2014 I finally had a chance to visit Chinatown today during a busy holiday season. This infatuation with Chinatown stemmed from a November visit of this year. On that day, Michelle and I were surprised at the amount of action going on that Sunday morning. It was just the farmer's market, but probably the best farmer's market on the island. We had dim sum at the end of our visit to top it all off. Before then, I thought the KCC Farmer's Market was the best on the island. The visit to Chinatown blew my mind and sparked an interest in the area. Flashback to last year, I taught a course in Modern History of Hawaii at Pearl City High School. Part of the content of the course was a section on the beginnings of Chinatown. With some knowledge of the subject, it only made sense to further my knowledge of Chinatown. I tend to do one of these mini research project during my break. Big problem is that I'm back logged with some of my projects like Ancient Si...

  Punalu'u Valley - December 7, 2014 December 7 is a day that will live in infamy, famous words by President  Roosevelt  as he prepared the nation to enter World War II. Its funny how this day is not remembered all to well in American History. People know about it, but don't seem to recognize it like the other holidays. Maybe its because it not a day of celebration.  I digress, today I had to get out. It has been 3 months since my last hike. Today was suppose to be a good change up from marathon training. I've been training hard the past 5 months for the December 14th Honolulu Marathon. It will be my 5th marathon and my 4th  consecutive  Honolulu Marathon. I didn't enter the Honolulu Marathon, rather I'm going to run it for Christian Young who is continuing on battling his Stage 4 throat cancer. His battle has been not only mine, but many runners inspiration to just run. Our motto is Run Young.  Daniel knows two great people, co-workers of his at Kahuk...