Working on the Lo'i in Punalu'u Valley

- December 06, 2014

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 Kahuku High School named Tara and Ikaika. They own farmland in Punalu'u. Ikaika looks for help especially to assist on his lo'i. That is where we come in. Our job is to volunteer an hour of our time to help Ikaika and Tara, and then get access to one of the great valleys on the island of Oahu.

Meet up time was at Daniel's house at 8am. The usual suspects (Dave & Sarah) were late. We figured that Sarah would come much later, she surprised us by coming only 20 minutes late. It was a big group today OAG's ~ Daniel, Sarah, Darren, & Allison. Also ~ Cory, Lynne, Ryan, Katie, Nate Y., Nate L., & Betsy. Making it 12 strong to help out and explore the valley.

We carpooled from Daniel's house to Punalu'u Valley via 3 cars. Ikaika was waiting at the gate and showed us where to go. We got out and got ready. Ikaika debriefed us on what to do. Since it was raining this week, he couldn't till the soil, thus we weren't going to work on lo'i #3. However, there were other things he needed help with and we were all ready to get our hands dirty.

We split up into two groups. Group 1 worked on taking care of weeds. Group 2 did kinda of the same, but we had to push the weeds back into lo'i #2. That is what we did for about 1 hour. It was very therapeutic with feet and hands in the mud and talking story. Stuff like this goes a long way in healing the soul. Ikaika was appreciative of our efforts and thanked us for our help.

After we finished, we got our gear ready and headed down Ikaika's driveway towards the stream. I remembered this stream from the Castle hike with HTMC. We took the dirt road for a while intersecting Castle Junction. The goal today was the O'opu Slide. Dave found it previously on past hikes into Punalu'u Valley, so he knew where to go. We hiked for about 45 minutes to get to the slide. Its a nice area. You can go swimming! Lots of mosquitos, but we hung there for a little while, chillin' and relaxin'. Cory when to catch crayfish for bait, he caught some big ones. Darren and Ryan jumped off the wall. The rest of us took pictures. Not sure the purpose of the O'opu Slide, I would assume it had something to do with protecting the O'opu or helping it produce.

After enjoying the O'opu Slide, half of us continued on the trail which apparently went upstream. We had a turn around time of 1pm. The trail was well traveled and easy to follow. There were junctions, but we stayed true. In about 45 minutes, we had to cross the stream. We did so for about 15 minutes, but Allison, Betsy, and I decided to stay behind, while the rest pushed on. We tried to wait for the others to come back, but with the turn around time looming, we decdied to head back to the farm.

What a fun day! Doing work, hiking, and exploring all wrap up into one. Can't wait to be invited again, big mahalo to Daniel for setting this up.