Our Little House: ....Kalalau Trail....

We planned to do some hiking on our trip and Jay chose the Kalalau trail for us. The trail starts at Ke'e Beach, the farthest spot you can drive to on the north shore. We left Wren for the day with Grandma Sondy and arrived at the parking lot around 8:30 AM. The trail itself is 11 miles long and leads to Kalalau Beach, which appears on lists as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

There are two side trips along the trail to waterfalls: one is Hanakapi'ai Falls and the other is Hanakoa Falls. We decided to try for Hanakoa Falls which meant a 6 mile hike in and then a half mile hike off trail. I anticipated we would be pretty speedy and figured on early afternoon return.

The trail started out pretty rocky and a little muddy and we passed many people loaded up for camping at Kalalau Beach. The day was gray and somewhat cool - great weather for hiking. Two miles in we reached Hanakapi'ai Valley, where the falls feed into the ocean and a 2 mile trail to the left leads to the waterfall. I made sure to take off my socks and shoes before crossing the water so I wouldn't get dirty and had been very careful up to this point to stay clean. The other day hikers broke away to the falls and we kept on the main trail, which almost immediately turned to muck - an unavoidable burnt sienna stream through red mud. The walking sticks we found were extremely helpful on our journey and Jay gave me a very helpful tip - keep my stick in the hand facing downhill, otherwise I would propel myself off the side of the hill in the event I slipped and tried to catch myself with my uphill-facing-stick-hand.

We experienced sun, rain, wind, rain, sun and many beautiful rainbows arching across the ocean. Campers coming back from the beach exchanged pleasantries and little bits of information about how amazing Kalalau Beach is with us as we squeezed between bushes to let them by on the narrow trail. We had to stop every so often just to look up and take in the amazing views (and enjoy our pb&j sandwiches!) without losing our footing.

We knew we reached the 6 mile mark when we came upon campsites and sheltered picnic tables (which were a little too close to the stinky pit toilet, so we snacked as we walked). We asked some fellow hikers where to find the trail up to Hanakoa Falls and received an iffy response of "to the left of the water....no, the right". We headed upstream and Jay crossed over to find a trail, but had no luck. After spending about 20 minutes in the area we decided to head back, passing what looked to be a trail off to the left of the water. Oh well! maybe some day in the future we will go back and make it to the waterfall and all the way to the beach. It was getting late for us to still have 6 miles back to the car and now the trail was slicker than before from the intermittent rain showers. Some sections were slow-going up steep and slide-y mud in sloshy shoes but we persevered, watching around every bend for signs of Ke'e beach up ahead. When it came time to cross back over at Hanakapi'ai Beach we happily trekked over with our shoes on, hoping to rinse out some of the mud.

I was very excited to get back to the parking lot around 4:30 PM - so much for an early afternoon! We tossed our walking sticks on the growing discard pile and waited our turn at the rinsing faucet to clean ourselves up a bit before driving home. We were very excited to get back and see our little Wren - she was a very good girl for Grandma Sondy and they had a great time together.