Kuli’ou’ou West Ridge

Looking for an easy hike after our Kawiwi hike last weekend, I settled on the Kuli’ou’ou West Ridge hike as I have never done that particular route before. Originally I was going to do it with the H.O.T. ( Hiking Oahu Trailblazers ) group, but their kick-off time of 9:00am was in conflict with other plans, so I asked Chris and met him at 7:00am at the top of Kalaau Place in Kuli’ou’ou Valley.

Trailhead

We followed the paved road until it ended at this fenced building. The trail is to the right of the building and is well ribboned as it makes it way up the ridge.

Which way does the wind blow?

The trail going up passes through ironwood trees, strawberry guava trees and other standard Koolau mountain foliage. I prefer this more direct route as you avoid the tedious switchbacks common on the Kuli’ou’ou Ridge Trail.

Kuli’ou’ou Valley

Looking back at the rain showers sprinkling Kuli’ou’ou Valley and the surrounding ridges, including the one we were hiking on. Up ahead, the cloud covered mountains did not look promising for scenic viewing.

Walking in the clouds

As we neared the top, the clouds enveloped us along with rain showers to complete the picture.

Pu’u O Kona

We arrived at the 2,200′ Pu’u O Kona to whiteout conditions. At least, the rain showers stopped to give us a break. Spoke too soon.

Landslide section

Chris preparing to cross the landslide section. It looks worse than it actually is.

Spider web

Since I didn’t have any opportunities to take scenic pictures, I practiced my macro picture taking on this spider web that was on the trail. Speaking of such, it sucks to be the person in front as you often get spider webs all over your face as you push your way through the trails.

Headed to the east ridge

The one cool thing I liked about walking in the clouds, is that it lended a surreal experience to our hike.

Kuli’ou’ou summit

We made our way to the Kuli’ou’ou summit and still had no views. Mother Nature was not favoring us today.

Headed back down

As we made our way down the muddy and puddled ridge trail, the sun started to break up the clouds. Well, at least we had nice views on our way down. Once we started to hit the switchbacks, we took some direct shortcuts to break the monotony.

GPS Tracks

I think I will need to do this 4.3 mile hike again. On a clear and sunny day!

Tagged as: kuliouou trail, kuliouou west ridge, puu o kona