One Helluva Stairway.....

Hai, Jeff and I hiked one giant staircase today, clandestinely. Monday is a great day to not go to work and have some fun. The nice thing is that the weather cooperated perfectly even if access to the trail is officially closed. There was decent cloud cover and wind the whole way so we didn't get burned or bitten, but there wasn't a drop of rain to wet the stairs. The stairway climbs something like 2500 feet to get to a peak of 2700 on the windward side up a metal staircase built by the military decades ago. The crazy thing was, we hiked super fast. Hai puked a little bit but lead the way the whole time. We were up to the top in 80 minutes and we made it all the way down in 23.... mostly using our hands to go sliding down the railing skipping steps. It was super fun. The nearly-vertical sections added some adrenaline. I have to say that going up was scarier than coming down for some reason. I don't really know why since on the way down you could see that you'd fall over a thousand feet if you screwed up anywhere. The winds at the top were really strong. I'd guess 40mph sustained with gusts up to 50. Not bad. There's a lot of old military equipment up there - a few pill boxes (guns) and a radar station. Tons of that stuff is around the island courtesy of WWII.

Fu Hai

Jeffie
Da Nut where Liz works.
Da Mok's (Mokulua Islands around Lanikai).
The Ko'olau's to the south.
Olomana and the windward side.
The H-3 and the peak of the A'iea ridge trail.
Leftover gun stuff.
Town side and a barely-visible Wai'anae range.


Kaneohe and the Marine Corps base.
The like-like highway and the H-3 going along the pali.

Fu Hai had his GPS and laid down our track on Google-Earth. Neat stuff.