Illumination at Night - Waihe'e at Night

- February 18, 2016

Waihe'e Illumination - February 19, 2016

Erik has been the biggest supporter of this event. Glow sticks down a waterfall and shooting long exposure to capture streaks. Erik set the time at 5:00pm, but since we were all working, we would meet at Waihe'e falls at random times. After work, I drove to Sports Authority to meet Erik. He drove us down to Kahalu'u and the Hamama trailhead. The hike up to Hamama to the banyan tree was fast maybe 35 minutes. We met David and Daniel at Waihe'e and started setting up shop. It got dark fast. Since I didn't have my camera it meant I had to be the runner. The runner has to climb up to the top of the falls and drop the glowsticks.

Climbing up was steep, but not too much of a problem. I dropped the glowsticks while everyone was trying to get the correct exposure setting. The falls is about 40 feet high. After I threw the glowsticks, Erik tried to throw it up to me, but it kept on coming back down. He had the brilliant idea of putting it in a dry bag and throwing it up all together. After the first attempt, I tried to climb down to get the communciation better. It was really hard climbing down, so I told the guys to shine a light while I made the decent.

After we took care of the communication, we did a few more trials. I was freezing balls at the top of the falls as spray was spitting on me while I waited. After we did the trials, we headed back. For some reason it was late in the evening already. Aprille came and left to look for Darren. On our way back we met Darren and his new girlfriend Jena.

We walked back in the dark to the steam and tried more trial runs with the stream. It looked to be a success. Unfortunately Aprille's new Nikon DSLR fell into the stream and didn't turn back on. That sucks.

After the stream, we decided to go to the pool to shoot more shots. The pool was a cool scene because it was wide creating nice streaks. Even Darren got in on the act.

It only took us 20 mintues to exit the trail in what was an awesome night hike. The post hike meal was Zippy Kaneohe. This is probably the only restaurant open this late in the evening. It was about midnight as we ate an great dinner. The service was slow, but the company was excellent. I was dead tired and ready to go to bed.

Another awesome hike, we have to do these night hikes more often. It is such a great event.