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Using This Book

How this book organizes the trips

Imagine the hour hand of a clock pinned to a point near the center of Oahu. Think of it sweeping around clockwise from a 12-o’clock position that’s due north. It’s easy to envision the hour hand pointing to 3 o’clock (due east), 6 o’clock (due south), and 9 o’clock (due west) as it moves around.

You can think of Oahu as a clock with its hour hand pinned to its approximate middle, a spot on the Schofield Plateau a little east of the H2 freeway and Miilani town. At 12 o’clock, the hour hand points to Kahuku Point at the north tip of Oahu. Around 3 o’clock, it points to Mokapu Peninsula, site of Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station. At 6 o’clock, it points to Pearl Harbor. At 9 o’clock, it points to Waianae, a major town on the leeward side of Oahu.

The trips start between 12 and 1 o’clock, near Hauula on the windward shore (Trips 1 and 2) and move clockwise around the island, ending a little before 12 o’clock near Waimea Bay (Trips 43 through 45). Here’s the Oahu clock showing Trip 28, Maunawili Falls:

All the clocks are oriented so that their vertical axes (“up”) are aligned with true north (also “up”), so I haven’t shown north arrows with them.

How to read the trip descriptions

The trip descriptions are in the following format, and here is what the information in each description means:

Distance

3½ miles

Elevation gain

713′

Hiking time

2 hours

Topos

Koko Head, Honolulu

Difficulty: Moderate to strenuous, hiking boots recommended

Highlights: A varied rainforest trail in Maunawili Valley leads to a lovely waterfall with a fine pool.

Title

Pretty self-explanatory

Trail type

There are four types of trips described:

Loop trips: You follow trails that form a closed loop. You don’t retrace your steps, or retrace them only for a relatively short distance.

Semiloop trips: The trip consists of a loop part and an out-and-back part.

Out-and-back trips: This is by far the most common type of trip in this book. You follow the trail to a destination and then retrace your steps to your starting point.

Shuttle trips: You start at one trailhead and finish at another, “destination” trailhead. The trailheads are far enough apart, or walking between them is sufficiently impractical, that you need to have a car or a ride waiting for you at the destination trailhead.

Terrain type

Icons give you a general idea of the kind of terrain you’ll be walking. Some hikes offer mixed terrain; for them, I’ve tried to indicate the terrain type where you’ll spend the most walking time:

Inland; hilly or mountainous

Near or at the ocean, such as along a beach or on cliffs above the sea

Location

The Oahu clock shows the hike’s approximate location relative to the rest of Oahu.

Distance

The distance is the total distance you have to walk.

Elevation gain

This figure is the approximate net elevation change between the hike’s highest and lowest points.

Hiking time

This is based on my normal hiking speed, which is a blazing 2 miles per hour.

Topos

The topo or topos listed here are the ones that cover the area you’ll be hiking in on this particular trip. As all the listed topos are 7½′ topos, I haven’t bothered to repeat “7½” for each listing. Topos are strictly optional for the very easy and easy trips but are strongly recommended for the other trips.

Strands of native, low-growing succulent akulikuli (Sesuvium portulacastrum) drape themselves across dark basaltic rocks on an Oahu beach.

Trail map

Only listed if the map cannot be found near the “Description.” Some trips, like the botanical gardens, don’t have maps because you can get the current map when you visit. See the end of this chapter for the trail-map conventions.

Difficulty and suggested shoes

A trip’s difficulty is based first on total distance and second on cumulative elevation gain and rate of gain. Let’s say that the elevation gain is negligible to moderate (it’s never steeper than about 500 feet/mile for any significant distance). In that case:

A very easy trip is 1 mile or less with negligible elevation gain/loss.

An easy trip is 1–2 miles with little elevation gain/loss.

A moderate trip is 2–5 miles and has some noticeable elevation gain/loss.

A strenuous trip is more than 5 miles and has significant elevation gain/loss.

If the trip has a section of, say, a half mile or more where it’s steeper than 500 feet per mile, or if the trail is especially rough or hard to follow, I’ve given it the next higher difficulty rating.

Some trips just aren’t safe if you’re not wearing boots that have soles that grip and which will give you some ankle support. However, only you live in your body, so you will have to be the final judge of what you can safely wear. The standard wording follows:

Tennis shoes recommended

Hiking boots strongly recommended

Hiking boots mandatory—the route is very rough.

Highlights

This gives you an idea of what I think the best features of the trip are. Usually, it’s the scenery—that’s one of the principal things you came to Hawaii for!

Driving instructions

This gives you instructions for driving to the trailhead, usually in terms of driving from Waikiki, where most of Oahu’s visitors stay. If you can’t take TheBus, these may help you. Most directions are given in terms of what I’ve called the “basic escape route from Waikiki,” which starts where McCully Street has just crossed the Ala Wai Canal and intersected Kapiolani Boulevard. (Appendix D offers one visitor’s suggestions—mine—for navigating in and out of Waikiki.) See also the chapter “Highways, Transportation and Trail Maps” for more information on getting around on Oahu.

TheBus routes

As explained in the earlier chapter “Hiking on the Capital Isle,” Oahu’s excellent public transportation system, TheBus, is a more reasonable alternative to driving to many trailheads. This section tells you which TheBus routes serve the trailhead (or don’t). TheBus stops running late at night, so be sure your plans and timing allow for your return by evening. Routes and schedules may change without notice, so it’s a good idea to check with TheBus in advance (808-848-5555; www.thebus.org) and/or with your driver.

Permit/permission required

You need permission to hike one trail on Oahu—so far. This section will tell you what you need permission for, if anything, and whom to apply to. See the chapter “Getting Permits or Permission” for whom to contact and where.

Description

This is the detailed description of the trip as I perceived it. I’ve tried to give you an idea of the more obvious plants and other features you’ll find, where the rough spots are, when you’ll be ascending and descending, where viewpoints are, and what you’ll see from those viewpoints.

On a few trips, the trail is faint to nonexistent, and the agency in charge has attempted to mark the route by tying tags of colored plastic ribbon to plants along the route. On Oahu, you may also find metal tags with arrows painted on them or bright paint “tags” splashed on boulders. You navigate by moving from tag to tag. Don’t count on tags to get you in and out of an area. Always keep track of where you’ve been by map and compass, by GPS, or by landmarks, as the tags may just peter out. There’s a lot of deadfall in a rainforest, for example, and the tags are lost when the plants they’re tied to fall.

Supplemental information

At the end of most of the trips there’s some extra information about the historical significance of places you’ll see along the route. Or maybe there’s a story—a myth, for example—related to the trip that I hope will add to your enjoyment of the trip. Perhaps there’ll be a bit more information about the plants in or the geology of the area. I put most of the supplemental information at the end so that it doesn’t interfere too much with the description of the trip itself. I think safety dictates that you give your attention first to the trip and only secondarily to the supplemental information. That is not a problem with easy and very easy hikes, so in those hikes, the supplemental information is often part of the main description.