Konahuanui 3 -- Waiakeakua Loop
Author : Pete Clines <peteclines@YAHOO.COM> “ Hiking is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get. ” That held true for several aspects of last Sunday’s outing. The weather, trail conditions, and even the route would all be a surprise when Duc, August, and I started off into Manoa Valley at 8:40am. First, the route. I originally planned to lead us up Manoa stream and bypass some waterfalls until we could no longer progress, and then we would climb to a side ridge and decide what to do from there. Simple enough, as Laredo and I had done this previously, encountering 17 falls before we decided to loop out another way. But on this day we only got past two falls – by climbing banyan trees as seen below – before we made a split - second decision to keep climbing up the ridge we were on instead of following the stream. Figured we were already pointing that direction.... So up we continued, sometimes with evidence of previous hikers – a swath - and somet