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...

Papali/Castle-Laie – May 5, 2013 I was invited by DGC (David C.) to his last Ko’olau Summit hike. DGC has done nearly the entire Ko’olau Summit, in segments of course. And this, was his last hurrah. DGC tried this hike a few months ago, but lost the trail at the helipad at Kawailoa. He decided to backtrack and go to Pupukea, which was a good thing because he was able to complete that portion of the KST, which he needed.   The week before, I asked fellow hiking partner Marvin for the gps track of this hike. He did Papali Uka/Castle-Laie a while back. Marvin got lost too during that time, but found his way, an accomplishment that should be commended. Today’s hike consisted of some experienced hikers. We had Ted, Randy, Thomas, Jay, Yoshi, Chenay, DGC, Gerwin, Kenji, Francis, and me. We met at the Temple Valley McDonald’s at 4:30am. There, we all ate breakfast, then talked about the pre-hike plan. The plan was to stage cars at the Hau’ula 7-11 and Laie Community Park. It was early in ...