Camping Near Mariner's Ridge

Mariner's Campout - February 19, 2017

I know Erik wanted to do this for a while. I said I would join him. I think OAG was interested, but in the end it was only Michelle and I with Aprille. Oh well, it was worth a try. 

To do an overnighter takes some planning and luck. We coordinated the food and had a plan. That was about it. Everything else rested on good weather and execution. Forecast was rain and wind, lots of wind. 

We met at the Hahaione trailhead. I can't remember the street off hand. I know it was by the Hawaii Kai apartments somewhere. Joining us were also David, Daniel, and Darrell. They were just going to the summit and back down, doing an in and out. I haven't seen Darrell in forever since last summer. It was good to see him again.  

Erik and I both had 40lbs packs. The problem with my pack was that the zipper to the top compartment broke, so I had to use a clip to hold my goods. The other problem was that our lantern was so big it couldn't fit in my pack, so it was dangling with a carabiner attached to the pack. 

Going up Hahaione was tiring and I was gasping for air early. My legs were tight and couldn't get loose. It was rough. I was perspiring so much. We all had difficulties going up the steep trail. 

We went at a slow pace although Erik did great blasting up the mountain. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to top out at the overgrown summit. It was Darrell first time on the KST, he was happy achieving a milestone in his hiking career. We traversed for about 1 hour on an overgrown KST to a lookout. There, David, Daniel, and Daryl left and I was a little concern about them getting out with daylight left. I was also concern about us getting to Mariner's with daylight left. 

Darrell on KST (left) Michelle on summit with view of Hahaione (right)

View on top of Hahaione (pc David)

I pushed Michelle hard to the summit of Mariner's. The KST was really overgrown making me think that nobody does this section much. Finally, we got to Mariner's Summit at 6:15pm right before sunset. We only had a short amount of time to set up. We got down to business. 

We picked an area a little to the right of the summit maybe 1 minute. It was a small area with ironwoods. We thought it would be a good place to break the wind. The winds were coming and it was strong. Michelle and I set up the tent and Erik and Aprille set up theirs. We put tarps up to block the wind and rain in case it came strong throughout the night. It was near pitch dark when we started cooking. On the menu were hot dogs, chili mac MRE, lasagna MRE. Hopefully it would taste good. After about 30 minutes of cooking, we ate. It did not disappoint. It was so good. I opened a bottle of wine to celebrate. Look at the pictures and tell me after a hike that this wouldn't be good. 

Camp OAG (left) making hot dogs (right)

Yummy hot dogs (left), Erik and his pepsi (right)

We went to the top of Mariner's to check out the view. It was nice! But short lived. It was just too windy. Michelle and I retired to the tent early, before 9am. The winds were strong. I fell asleep like a baby because of the alcohol. During the night I remembered grabbing the bivy because I was so cold. The winds were howling, like I've never heard before. It was super loud and that is all we could hear throughout the night. I felt the tent lift up a bit and got scared, but I was in a deep sleep so it must have not been too bad. The bivy did the job because I felt good. I had a solid 4-5 of sleep before waking up at 3:45am. I fell in and out of sleep until 6:30am. 

When I got out of the tent, I was surprised that it wasn't too cold. I took a piss. Erik and Aprille woke up already and we got some water going on Erik's pocket rocket to make hot chocolate and coffee. The coffee was excellent. We wanted to catch the sunrise, but didn't get to because of cloud cover. The view on Mariner's is near world class!

Me drinking coffee on Mariner's (left), World class view on Mariner's (right)

We ate saimen, vienna sausage, and pastries for breakfast. Choke calories for the morning. After breakfast we packed up which took 30 minutes and left Mariner's. The wind was amazingly strong, almost to the point that it could blow us over. It took us a little over 40 minutes to Kitty Liter. The wind was unbearable. We took our time and climbed the rock face of Kitty Liter. We didn't have any problems which was good. The wind at the top of Kitty Liter was almost hurricane strength. It damn near blew me over. 

Mariner's overgrown (left), Michelle packing up (right)

At the top of Kitty Liter, it was now all down hill. Michelle took her time. Unfortunately, I lost the lantern which was attached to my backpack. The bottom of my lantern unscrewed and fell off the ridge down into the valley. RIP lantern. It was an awesome lantern, a lantern we used to do many campouts with.  

Total time from Mariner's to the car was 2 hours and 30 minutes. We changed and went to the Pancake House in Kalihi to eat good pancakes. Joining us was Bernice and Darren. We talked so much stories which lasted for hours. There appears so much for our group to do. Our next overnighter will be Kawailoa Helipad.