Waimalu Middle Ridge: Hooked by the Lure

Waimalu Middle Ridge: Hooked by the Lure

Posted to OHE on 22 January 2003 by Kirby Young

Came traveling to Oʻahu to visit the ʻohana for one week, and I thought I’d check out a hike or two. Funny touristy OHE write-ups about trails sometimes hook you in—sometimes with Wing Ng as the author.

• Diamond Head rim — “Great views, use one of my 21 routes to exit should authorities give chase.” Didn’t bring my running shoes. OK, I admit Wing didn’t actually write this.
• Olympus–Castle — under renovation. Right, I didn’t bring my garden tools.
• Waimalu Middle Ridge — “‘Mystical spot’ lookout to the other side. I fervently hope that more people would do this hike.” Ummm… ahhhh. OK, sign me up! I’d never even been in Waimalu Valley.

It’s Friday, January 17. First delay: I had promised to take my mother to breakfast. Promise fulfilled. After that, I arrived at the Waimalu Ditch Trailhead just outside a gated community on Onikiniki Place at about 10:00 a.m., and was on the trail by 10:10.

This was certainly a very late start, given one OHE estimate of nine hours for a round trip to the top of Waimalu Middle Ridge. Well, I’ve got a flashlight, I thought.

I began by descending several short switchbacks of more recent vintage to intersect the venerable, open, and graded Waimalu Ditch Trail. After a few minutes I passed some basalt lava cliff faces on the right—one with a small rock arch, another with a dark cave of sorts. Before encountering these geological oddities, I passed rock faces that might offer short, fun rock climbs under roped belay, though I didn’t examine them closely for loose rock.

After a major zigzag across the small Waimalu tributary valley, I continued along the gently undulating and wide-open Ditch Trail (thanks to HTMC clearing on 3/17/02, apparently), arriving at the first Waimalu Stream crossing around 11:05 a.m. Water was present but only weakly flowing, with many stagnant pools.

I vaguely recalled something about the sequence of crossings—a poem of sorts: “1, 2, mango…” (thanks to Gene Robinson’s write-up)—but I clearly remembered that after stream crossing #9, I was to head up and over a hill to reach crossing #10. I did this and discovered it was a narrow neck of land inside an entrenched meander of Waimalu Stream. After only a couple of minutes, I suddenly saw the streambed again.

Here I made a route error by staying on the left bank and proceeding too far upstream. What I should have done was: (a) immediately cross upstream of the confluence of the two major Waimalu Stream forks that divide around Waimalu Middle Ridge, then (b) turn immediately left and walk to the nose of the ridge on the wedge of land upstream of the confluence.

Instead, I crossed about 30 yards upstream on the dry left fork. I saw no evidence of a trail heading up the ridge where I was looking. So, of course, I bashed, floundered, and slogged through sometimes head-high uluhe on the face of the middle ridge, angling right until I finally found a swath—yes, of sorts. But I had found the Middle Ridge trail at last. The time was about 11:50 a.m.

What I didn’t know was that this was about as good as the “trail” would get. I ascended steeply, pushing uluhe aside with my hands, grateful at least for a faint swath to guide me. Reaching the top of the initial steep pitch, I noticed that the map I’d been carrying in my pants pocket had been pickpocketed by uluhe.

So I retraced my steps downward (ugh) and, what do you know, only about 30 yards down found it resting snugly among the ferns in its Zip-Loc bag. This was especially fortunate because the map was annotated with all sorts of venerable trail information—something I wouldn’t want to lose.

Heading uphill again, time passed—an awfully long time—as I plowed ahead, eventually reaching a high point of about 1,000 feet on the topo map. Oh my gosh, I should be higher and farther, I thought. It was then I really knew I wasn’t making much progress from an MPH standpoint. Beyond this point, there was no swath at all. This was disheartening enough with a hint of a trail; without one, it was brutal.

For the next two-plus hours, there was nary a trail. I fought through uluhe, dodged hala, bobbed and weaved among a variety of wonderful native vegetation (most of which I had no hope of naming), and occasionally trod—lightly, I hoped—on ankle-hugging native plant life (ouch). Only in several places was there clear evidence of a trail, but it was enough to know I was experiencing some quality trail archaeology.

At 2:45 p.m., I was whupped. After more than three hours of pushing and shoving, my legs began cramping. Standing atop an 1,800-foot high point on the ridge, I estimated it was still at least 1.5 hours to the Koʻolau summit. It didn’t matter. I was done—processed and beaten back by totally overgrown conditions.

With odd comfort, I realized that starting earlier wouldn’t have helped; my leg cramps would have made sure of that. What I needed was better electrolyte balance and more frequent tune-up hikes. I took in the grand vista for a few minutes, standing squarely in the back of the widening Waimalu drainage, totally immersed in this remarkably wild country.

Reluctantly heading back, I found descending the ridge required more effort than expected. Still, I moved more quickly along my own swath—downhill is downhill, after all—sl