A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE OF OAHU
Mode: Hike, run, mountain bike.
Conditions: Dry coastal trail. Flat, rocky. A couple of washouts. No water. No shade. No sanitary facilities.
To reach: Park at the end of Farrington Highway where the pavement runs out nine miles past Makaha Valley Road; or at the end of the pavement on Mokuleia Beach Road past Dillingham Field. Both entries are about an hour by car from Waikiki.
The point is utterly wild, the most remote place on Oahu. Much of the point area is part of the 12-acre Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve, one of the last habitats for rare Naupaka Mixed Coastal Shrubland. This habitat includes the federally endangered `ohai bush and provides nesting for the Laysan Albatross. Like a lot of local residents, after enduring the hustle-bustle-traffic-dash out of Honolulu, you may have a hard time believing that this lovely area is really part of Oahu. Maui, maybe. Or Molokai. This much unspoiled natural beauty couldn't be Oahu, could it? But it is Oahu, just over an hour from Waikiki. I love the sound of stereotypes shattering. On the trail to Kaena, it is the sound of waves and wind and the ryhthmic fall of boots on rock, and the baritone belch of a spouting horn.
I generally prefer to approach along the Leeward Coast, although coming along the North Shore is especially dramatic during big winter surf. Follow the H-1 west until it turns into Farrington Highway near the Ko Olina Resort. You'll feel the change just past the Hawaiian Electric power plant at Kahe Point. This is the Leeward side. Sunny. Dry. White sand beaches. Uninhabited hillsides. And the bluest water on the island. The pace of life begins to slow. Makaha offers the last outpost of civilization. The market next to Cornet at the intersection of Farrington Highway and Makaha Valley Road offers a deli, snacks and bottled water for the trail.
From the junction of Farrington Highway and Makaha Valley Road, it's about eight miles to the end of the road. Just past idyllic Yokohama Bay of surfing lore, you're there. Park near the end of the paved road.
From the end of either Farrington Highway or Mokuleia Beach Road, it's 2.5 miles to the NAR. Hikers, runners and mountain bikers can go all five miles around the point from one side to the other. Four-wheel-drive vehicles can go only a mile or so from the Makaha side until halted by a severe trail washout.
Instead of starting directly up the trail, go left toward the ocean and follow the rocky cliff for 70 yards to a keyhole in the lava where the ocean surges and boils through a series of labrynthine passages. A cylinder six feet across in the rock fills with water and rises 15 feet in a second or two, then drops just as fast. A very powerful erosion feature. But watch your step -- a slip or trip here could be intensely unpleasant.
You can retrace your steps to the trail head or pick up the trail a few yards further down the coast. The trail, cut between the sea and the sheer clifs of the Waianae Mountains, was built for the tracks of the old Oahu Railroad and Land, which was out-moded by cars and improved highways. The train stopped running in the early 1950s and the tracks and ties are long gone.
On the trail, while the destination is decidedly of the land -- the white lighthouse in the distance marks Kaena Point -- the focus of this hike is the sea. The churning, restless sea is never more than 30 feet below, immediately to your left. With the exception of that washout (bikes can be portaged), it's an easy trail, but rocky and uneven. The only danger is in keeping your eyes on the ocean and not on the trail. Low lava cliffs form cove after cove that alternate with black boulder beaches where the crash of waves rumble and echo. The fresh scent of salt mist drifts up from the rocks.
A few rusted remnants of automobiles dot the coast, some no doubt the result of indiscriminate dumping, others of indiscriminate driving.
Far more interesting is the succession of archways carved in the rock by wave action. There's something about natural bridges that appeal to the eye and to the heart? This is erosion at its most artistic, even architectural. And natural bridges prove that the Earth is like people -- it has soft spots, too. Yet part of the rock, like my friend Henry Loui who faught cancer so bravely and beat it for six years, holds fiercely onto this existence even as life crumbles all around.
A mile or so along the trail, I paused for a sip of water and heard a soft but resonant whooshing, as if a giant was breathing over my shoulder. Naw, couldn't be. Must have been the wind. Or my imagination.
But I jumped when the giant belched over my shoulder. Just below the trail, ocean spray surged through a tiny blow hole in the top side of a lava cliff, at least 30 feet back from the sea. One day hundreds or thousands of years from now, maybe it will have grown as big and wild as that riotous keyhole in the rock back at the start of the trail. But for now, it is just a couple of inches across and supporting a mini-eco-system with its spray.
The trail passes so many dramatic and colorful meetings of land and sea. The further you hike, and the higher the sun rises, the blue ocean looks more and more inviting. But be careful. There are no beaches for easy ocean access, which means no easy way to get out, either. Strong currents and waves prevail.
And as you become increasingly aware, you're all alone out here. This has to be the loneliest two and a half miles of beachfront on Oahu. I passed a family of cyclists, three local fishermen and two other hikers on the trail during a recent visit.
Trails through the Natural Area Reserve are sandy and marked by hand-laid stones. Certain individual plants are also surrounded with rocks for protection. Because off-road vehicles destroyed much of the native vegetation, barriers now restrict access by 4WDs. But careless hiking can destroy the fragile hold a plant has in the dune ecosystem as easily as a churning studded tire. Even in the best of times, life clings desperately to the rocks and sand on the windy point.
It's a strange sensation from the point, looking down both the west and the north coasts of the island at the same time. According to my compass, the last lava arm of Kaena points due west. On this day, the wind whistles directly out of the north. On the northern side of the point and all along the North Shore to Kahuku, the sea is a frenzy of white caps and froth. On the other side, in the lee, the sea is blue and waves are regular and steady, produced by tide, not wind. It's obvious that the lava arm continues to divide the sea well out into the water.
Naupaka Mixed Coastal Shrubland does not have quite the same media appeal or power of description as "rainforest." Although this kind of habitat was once common on shorelines of all islands, it is now far more rare than rainforests. Shorelines have always been the first developed for human consumption, whether for homes, businesses, agriculture, grazing, roads or resorts. Here at Kaena Point, it is making a Naupaka Mixed Coastal Shrubland is making a last stand. And it looks so, well, natural! And wild. With the return of native plants, laysan albatross birds are also returning. A complex ecosystem is a healthy eco-system. Who knows what fellow natives will follow the albatross?
Standing now at the furthest reach of Kaena Point where it slides into the sea, I'm again amazed that this is Oahu. I've fallen in love with this island once more as if for the first time.
As usual, the return trip takes considerably less time than the out-going, probably because I finished the film back at the point and make fewer stops to shoot photographs. About a mile from the trail head, I step onto the side of the path to let a blue rental Jeep pass. A young G.I. and his girlfriend stop.
"You O.K.?" he says.
"Huh?"
"Are you in trouble? Do you need a ride?" They are genuinely concerned, would-be Good Samaritans.
"No thanks. I'm hiking."
They are taken aback. A man who is routinely ordered to march as part of his job does not often consider doing it recreationally.
"How's the road?" he says.
"Fine, until you get to the washout just ahead. The only way to get past is on foot."
Their faces drop in disappointment.
"You mean we can't drive around?" she says.
"Nope."
"I don't know why they just don't pave it all the way around," he says. "They've paved everything else."
The words are barely out of his mouth when they swing back and hit him like a boomerang. He smiles. Of course, that is exactly why they haven't paved the last five miles of road around Kaena Point.
And that has a lot to do with why it's a great walk.
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