Hiking Trails on Oahu

Pohakea to Palikea - January 7, 2018 Baron invited OAG with him on this hike. He wanted to do a route from Pohakea to Palikea and make a loop out of it. Seemed a little ambitious, but he gave a 10 hour window for it, so there would be time to complete it.  I was excited as this would be an opportunity to do this section of the WST again and get a chance to see more native plants which is rejuvenating my passion for hiking.  Erik and Aprille picked Michelle and I at 6:15am and drove us to Walmart Kunia where we met with Baron, Darren, Kellie, Bernice, and Marilou. There would be 9 of us on today's trek. We would carpool in 2 trucks through the Kunia farmlands to the trailhead.  Baron has mastered this area and so has Darren and Erik, they easily made their way through a maze of dirt roads to the trailhead. We started hiking at about 7:15am. The initial part of the hike was on a jeep road up a steep incline. The grade was like 40%, although that is my estimate, it coul...

Palehua-Palikea – June 30, 2013 Today I was invited on a hike which is known to be the home of many endemic and endangered species. But the two endemic spieces we’d be looking for today are happy face spiders and Hawaiian Land snails. I live right down the hill from Palehua road. I’ve been there twice, both times without permission. But this time, I would be joining Nate as he would be helping us find some rare bugs. In addition, we would have enough time to search the preserve for what we needed to look for. Joining the crew today were some all-stars and experienced hikers a like. They were Marcus, Thomas, Jay, Kenji, Chenay, Janice, Thessa, Dave, DJ, Aaron, and Lynne. We met at the top of Makakilo at 7am, and car pooled over to Palehua. There, Nate led a blistering pace to the enclosed reserve. According to Nate, this reserve was built because of one rare snail. Nate told me that it took him 3 years to find this rare snail, but it is not on the endangered list, go figure. Its name is...