And now, The Rest of the Story - or Kalalau Death March Revisited

KALALAU DEATH MARCH

This is the kind of scene that lures you in to the Kalalau trail. It sucks you in, and then it does its best to destroy you. It was twenty four years ago that we first saw this trail. Twenty years ago for our twentieth wedding anniversary, we spent a week here. So.... when I booked the condo in Kauai, I also arranged for a permit to backpack overnight to Kalalau beach. It cost us $40. This year will be our 40th wedding anniversary. I wanted to see if we could still do it now that we are approaching the dreaded 60 year mark. Janene did not have any great desire to go again, but she always is willing to prove her love for me. If the truth were known, she probably knows I would go anyway by myself, and she wanted to be there to keep me from having a heart attack.

The picture of Janene shows that we took much lighter packs. I brought an ultralight tent (which is a must on the Na Pali coast for either the rain or the slithering things), no sleeping bags, no stove, no fuel, and only food that didn't need to be cooked. We arrived in Kauai in a torrential downpour. The road to our hotel was partially closed because of flooding. Getting from our car to our room, we were completely drenched. I could not have been more wet if I had jumped into the ocean fully clothed. For the next two days, it rained constantly. Switching from our hotel for one night to our condo for the week, we were stunned to find that it was the most beautiful place on the island. I told Janene "It would be a shame to leave this beautiful condo and go sleep in a tent". The night before our permitted time, there was a sucker hole in the weather - and we fell for it.

This was the first sign we saw on the trail. Hmmm - That wasn't there before. We had camped at Hanakapiai Beach on the way out. That was our true anniversary night and we shared crackers and imported cheese with our N.A. wine. You couldn't get near the water. The waves pounded the shoreline, there was no sand on the beach (only rocks), and neither of us got any sleep.  (for the noise, for crying out loud) The trail turned into a mud wrestling pit in the night, and it took us as long to hike out the last two miles as we had taken to hike the previous six. As we got to this sign, this year, the rain began to pour down. An ominous sign, indeed. Janene counted the hash marks. It was 77, I think.

When we got to Hanakapiai, in order to continue the hike, we had to cross this river. Our hearts sank as we realized we could never cross it and stay dry. For heaven's sake, we probably couldn't cross it without being washed to sea. I remembered something from the old guidebook. If the river is too swift, it said, just wait for a while until the rain-swollen river subsides. After 45 minutes, it did subside - to this! We sat down and ate lunch and finally got the courage to make the attempt. I threw our walking sticks over the river, moved the stuff around in our packs to make sure the stuff that had to stay dry did stay dry and then forded the river. I left my pack and came back across to get Janene's pack and brought her across too. We immediately started up the trail stream, because by now it had resumed raining in earnest and the trail was at least a foot or two deep in rushing brown water.

When the trail wasn't full of water, it was dry enough to be a slimy brown mess. Janene said she felt like she had been hiking the last three miles on snot. One long slippery snotty mess where you couldn't take your eyes off the trail for two seconds for fear of losing your life. What a way to go! Sliding off into oblivion, rejoicing that at least when you finally hit the bottom, all that slippery snotty brown mess would be washed from your bruised and muddy body. And then - the sun would come out, and you would remember why you came in the first place.

Oh, the waterfalls! Everywhere you looked, there was water running down the mountainsides. There was one point where we could see 14 or 15 giant waterfalls, each over several hundred feet in length. By the time we reached our camp, we had been reduced to little brown slimeballs desperately searching for a dry place to set up our dry (up to now) tent. We were thoroughly exhausted and could hardly stand up.

Every semi-flat place we could find to set up the tent had a stream or rivulet running through it. All the flat places were miniature lakes. I finally realized that what we thought was someone else's camp, was really someone's abandoned tent and blanket - and water bottle and pans and clothes. Somebody must have really been tired. The ground there was not covered in liquid, so it was a good spot for us. As soon as the tent was set up, it started raining again, so even though it wasn't completely dark, we burrowed into our dark dry hole and had a nice dinner of peanut butter and cheese and crackers. We each had a light fleece blanket (thank you, Diana) that wasn't really long enough to cover us, but we made it through the night, the whole time waking up every hour or so to see if we were still dry- something we were miraculously able to do, thanks to some very earnest (and answered) prayers.

The next morning, we hurriedly packed everything up before the torrent began again, and headed back for home. Now we know why this place is so green. This is one of the wettest places on earth, with something like five hundred inches of rain every year. As much rain fell in the one 24 hour period that we were on the trail as we get in Utah in a year.

If you think this is an idyllic forest streamlet, you are wrong. IT'S THE TRAIL!

This, too, is the trail. Janene became very proficient at balancing on rocks covered with water. Thank goodness for our hiking poles! We could not have done this without the poles. They turned us into little four-legged animals.

Like these feral goats we ran across on the trail. When Hurricane Iniki hit Kauai, everyone who had a pet or domestic animal lost their pets in the storm. There are now goats, and wild cats, and CHICKENS, everywhere chickens, all over the island. The mayor of Kauai just got a new law passed. If you take a picture of a chicken, you have to take it home with you to the mainland.

Another brief moment where the sun came out. The lime green patch is where they can land a rescue helicopter if you get in trouble. The one thing that we did not experience like we did last time, was helicopters. Twenty years ago, they were as plentiful as the mosquitoes, and just as irritating. I guess no one wants to pay $200 to go up in a helicopter to watch the windshield wipers go back and forth.

Yep! Another picture of the trail. Silly you, you thought it was a waterfall.

Maidenhair fern. When we have seen maidenhair in the desert, they are flimsy little plants hanging to the sandstone cliffs at places like Calf Creek Falls or Weeping Rock. Here, they form huge green blankets all over the jungle floor.

Pretty soon, it was time to say farewell to the Kalalau Trail for another twenty years. Can you see us doing this again for our 60th anniversary? We did not make it in to the famous Kalalau beach this time. The 12 mile slogfest was all we could handle. Sharon Griffin has already commented on my choice of clothes for the hike. She will be glad to know that I threw them all away - including the hiking boots and socks. There was no way they could be used again.

As we were leaving, the island gave us one more visual request to come back and sit a spell.
I can't wait till I am almost eighty!

Kalalau Killer Hike

Twenty years ago, Janene and I decided to do a crazy thing. For our 20th wedding anniversary we chose to go backpacking on the Na Pali coast of Kauai to Kalalau Beach. The trail is 11 miles long and is listed by The Sierra Club as the most difficult hike in the United States. Backpacker Magazine calls it one of the ten most dangerous hikes in the world. The trail is over a thousand years old and leads over successive pali or cliffs along the shore of Kauai where no roads could be built.

The cliffs rise abruptly from the ocean and this leaves the trail mostly on the edge of the cliffs sometimes a thousand feet above the water. The rugged terrain forces the trail to climb hundreds of feet quickly with subsequent drops to clear obstacles in the path. Each drainage has steep walled canyons with waterfalls at the head of each canyon. Every one of these canyons must be crossed by following the contours of the land. This means that you will be hiking in dense jungles when in the canyons, and on shear cliffs when near the ocean.

The final destination is Kalalau Beach with a huge waterfall that drops right to the beach from the cliff face. The first two days we were there, we were the only ones on the beach. This is not a swimming beach. The waves pound this beach relentlessly and we had to almost yell at each other to be heard over the noise. It never rained on our trip and the heat was unbearable, but the view from the beach was worth it.

We set our tent up back from the beach in the forest atop piles of leaf litter. It made for a soft bed, but all night long we could hear little critters and slithering things underneath us. We carried sleeping bags and pads and never really needed them at all. We also took the cookstove and fuel for boiling water and cooking. We vowed that if we ever went again, we would not carry all that weight.  It was way too hard to stay balanced on the trails with all the weight on our backs.

This view from part of the trail above gives you an idea of the trail as it approaches one of the cliff faces. At that point the trail is no more than a foot wide with precipitous drops below to the crashing surf.

This is what it looks like looking down from that same section of trail. The waves have carved a tunnel out of the lava rock. The trail is on crumbling cinders and volcanic dust, so it turns into a Slip-N-Slide when it gets wet. Fortunately it didn't rain until our last day when we had passed this scary part.

 

This view is from the other side of the same spot.

 

Once we had passed the extreme cliffs, we relaxed a little. There was a short buffer of vegetation before the cliffs dropped into the ocean so it seemed safer, but here Janene slipped quietly off the trail and started rolling down the hill. I didn't hear her until she screamed as she approached the cliff face. She had the presence of mind to spread eagle with her arms and legs or she would have been a goner. She wasn't hurt. She was mostly worried that the bottle of champagne (bubbly grape  juice) and the champagne glasses she had hidden in her pack for our anniversary night on the trail had broken and that I would think she was bleeding.

Over all, it was an enjoyable and rewarding trip even though much of the time we were totally exhausted. We had spent five nights in paradise. We vowed that, someday, we would return. Only next time, we would dispense with the sleeping bags, the sleeping pads, and all the cooking gear.

Utah Family in Peril of Tsunami?

We have lived in Utah all our lives. The only time we have seen a siren like this is when we have been in the West Desert looking for geodes. They use them to warn of a nerve gas leak at Tooele Army Depot. In Hawaii, they use them to warn of a tsunami. When we got there, I showed this siren to Janene and Mary Lynn. Mary Lynn commented "Oh, wouldn't that be horrible to be here on vacation and have that siren go off"

Janene and I went backpacking on the Na Pali coast (more about that later) and had just gotten back to our condo when we heard the sirens go off. Janene said she just thought the maintenance  people were cleaning the pool. NOT! We turned on the TV and found out that Japan had just been hit with a tsunami and it was headed straight to Hawaii.

When we were on the trail, there were markers that showed where the tsunami "safe" zone was. We were surprised to run into them after we had hiked up three sets of switchbacks. They were three hundred feet above sea level. As we watched the details of what had happened to Japan and saw the tsunami warning map, we realized that Shon was also in Hawaii working, and Chelane was supposed to be in Thailand, also within range of the tsunami. We talked with Shon by phone just as the sirens sounded in Waikiki. It took a while longer to track Chelane down. She was lucky. She was in Laos - and safe. Here fully one half of our family from Utah was being threatened by a tsunami

 There was Hawaii - right at the end of the red finger of danger. We ran to the store to buy supplies in case the power station was knocked out and the airport was damaged. We stayed up watching the news, but when we realized that it would be dark at the time it hit Kauai and the projected wave was only six feet high, I decided to go to bed. Janene said " Are you kidding?, I can't sleep. I need to stay up. We are from Utah. I will never see a tsunami again in my lifetime." She went to bed at 4:30AM and at 5:30AM all our families and friends started calling to see if we were OK. We were OK, Shon was fine and Chelane was safe.

For us, this was an inconvenience and a momentary scare. For the people of Japan this is a life changing event. We have tried to contact our friend Kimie and her family Jyunichi, Kenichi and Yuri, but have been unsuccessful. We are praying for their family and hope they see this blog and can let us know they are safe. We know they watch our blog from time to time. They are between Fukashima and Tokyo so they should be safe. We are thankful that our family was protected. We pray that theirs is as well.
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