Hiking in Hawaii is a very unique experience. I suppose it could be compared to somewhere like Fiji if I had to guess… but it’s very different from hiking in New England and I’d go as far as to say most of CONUS. You can never be too sure about the “officialness” of a hike, or to put it plainly “am I allowed on this part of land”. I’m not fully clear on why this is, but I think it has a lot to do with the history of Hawaiians and the respect of ‘aina (land). There seems to be this back and forth between the cultural “everyone has access to all land” and “yes that’s true but we started this thing called private property” and “there are certain ancient places that shouldn’t be disturbed”. Then you throw in money and politics and it’s one big pot of “Is this hike allowed or no?” So it’s all just kinda weird. The best example of this is the controversial stairway to heaven hike.
I have done hikes that are labeled “private” on All Trails. It’s labeled Private because it’s inside the military base. So, really, is it all that private?
All this to give me justification for trying another “Private” hike called Deadman’s catwalk. It’s at the top of a ridge accessible by an access road. I’ve had a lot of requests to do this hike for KOSC, but I had real reservations about it. So I thought I’d ask Jess to go check it out with me first.
Well, when we get there, there’s a HUGE sign saying NO TRESPASSING and HIKING NOT ALLOWED and a big locked gate. This is different than other “private hikes” that have a dingy fence and small do not enter sign. It makes Jess and I uncomfortable, but friends of ours have done it so… we try. As we get closer, a car enters, and we kinda stay back on the sidewalk for a bit.
After getting over the fence, we start walking up, to see a sign that says HIKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Gulp. We try to ignore it. Then we get higher and a truck drives by. Jess kinda runs to hide, I think to myself there’s no way I’m not being seen… and the truck drives by without saying anything.
Finally, we get to another gate, and it has huge signs again. It was just the final straw… I wasn’t comfortable continuing. I kept thinking to myself that it’s a bit hypocritical of me, who has started to loathe the damage hiking tourists do to our neighborhood, to be doing something similar to someone’s property who clearly does not want hikers. It’s not like it was some jungle hike with signs saying “stay out”. It had multiple gates and multiple huge signs. Jess was with me, so we left and went to tackle a back up hike, Koko crater arch.
Koko crater arch is on the ocean side of koko crater (the crater hike with the famous railway “stairs” I attempted). You park at the Halona blow hole parking lot, walk the shoulder of a decently busy road, and then veer to the right up the crater. This is looking back at the path we just took.
Just beautiful coastal scenery looking up toward Haunama Bay.
It has been pretty windy lately, so I didn’t make it much further than this to the arch. That face gets really steep. I’d do it on a less windy day, but really I got a picture of the arch and some scenery so I didn’t feel I needed to. People like to get pictures under and on top of the arch.
To the left of Jess you can see a rope people use to get on top. She investigated inside a bit and said there was a steep drop.
Here’s one image from our trespassing hike. This is looking back toward koko and Hawaii Kai… the goal was to get to a platform to look over toward Waimanalo, our side of the island. Oh well.
