There was a full moon out tonight and instead of howling, we went hiking up Diamond Head. Picked up Chris and David from KCC and parked in a sleepy residential neighborhood side street. Started off a little past 3:30am and scrambled through dry grass, kiawe trees and crumbly terrain as we made our way up the crater rim.

Pillbox bunker

David and Chris silhoutted on the first pillbox bunker.

Crater rim

From the second pillbox bunker, we could see the city lights of Waikiki cast her glow behind the crater rim.

Diamond Head lighthouse

Looking down at Diamond Head Road and Lighthouse from the third pillbox bunker.

Fire Control Station

Looking at the fire control station buried at the top of Leahi or Diamond Head from the fourth pillbox bunker. Since we had time to kill, we climbed up the front of the fire control station to the lookout.

City lights

City lights of Waikiki from the fifth pillbox bunker.

Diamond Head crater floor, Koko Crater and Koko Head

At 6:00am, the tunnel opened and a stream of headlights announced that Diamond Head was open for business.

Best seats in the house

The best seats in the house was on the fifth pillbox bunker and not the lookout. As the lookout was soon to be as congested as the malls are during holiday shopping.

The Lookout at 6:00am

At 6:00am, the Diamond Head Lookout was very peaceful and quiet. That was about to change.

The Lookout at 6:40am

Soon we saw bobbing figures with flashlights making their way up the trail and to the lookout. It filled up pretty fast and the chatterings of English, Japanese and Korean drifted our way. Some folks made their way to the fifth pillbox and shattered our exclusivity and unfettered views.

Sunrise

Sunrises are always pretty to watch, but even more spectacular when you’re on top of a mountain.

Panoramic view from Diamond Head

Click here for the larger image.

Diamond Head Tunnel

Now the most dangerous part of the hike, we had to walk out of the tunnel without getting hit by the cars that were coming in and out of Diamond Head Crater.

Having never done a night hike, well intentionally, we decided that this month’s full moon or blue moon was too good to pass up a chance to hike the entire crater rim of Diamond Head at night. I met up with Chris, Chance “Shoeless”, Kaimi and Sina at 9:30pm. Thanks to Dave for the directions! We skirted the guardrail at the end of the street and made our way up to the crater rim. The full moon was very bright, making it quite easy to see where we were going, we didn’t even need flashlights.

Military Bunker

Once we got to the rim, I attached a chemlight to one of the Kiawe tree branches to mark our return spot and then we headed left to the lookout. We soon came upon this half buried bunker with the roof partially open, as we peered inside with the assistance of our cell phone flashlights, we could see flags and pictures inside the bunker. There are actually stairs that lead down to this bunker, but it was locked. With no way of getting inside, short of climbing in from the top; which Chance was vigorously trying to persuade us to do, we continued our way on the rim. I also didn’t realize that there are roads inside the crater that are actually quite close to the rim in some areas.

Waikiki at Night

We soon passed two more pillbox bunkers and then ran across the remnants of barbed wire on the ocean side, probably dating back from World War 2. The rim gradually became steeper as we headed towards the lookout.

Panoramic night view from the lookout

Click here to see the larger panoramic image taken by Chris with his phone.

Where’s the moon?

Clouds started to hide the moon from us for a couple hours and gently pelted us with light showers. We got to the lookout around midnight just in time to take shelter from the light drizzle.

Diamond Head Lookout

The showers soon stopped out and the moon came back out. The night views of the city lights from the top at 761′ were just amazing, unfortunately most of my pictures came out either blurry or dark. So much for night mode on my camera. We then left the lookout and passed the last bunker on the rim and made our way down. Some parts of the rim narrowed considerably and there were a couple rock faces we had to climb down, all in the moonlit darkness. Sina soon ran out of gas around 3:10am and couldn’t go further; so we agreed that Chris, Kaimi and Sina would head down in the crater and camp out until the park opened at 6am. Chance and I would return back to where we had started from and pick them up at the bus stop inside the crater when they opened. We continued on the now flat rim trail, an irony that we passed on to the rest of the group when we saw them in the morning, passed the communications tower and headed back down the crater and got to our cars around 4:45am.

Panoramic view of Diamond Head

We drove to the lookout point that is right before the Diamond Head Kahala Tunnel and took a power nap. At around 5:45am, we woke up to hordes of tourists milling around and waiting for the gates to open. After the long stream of tour buses made their way into the tunnel and gave us a chance to get in, we picked up the rest of the group and headed home to a well deserved sleep. Click here to see the larger image of Diamond Head Crater Rim from inside the park.