Extreme Hiking Hawaii

THE INSPIRATION Having witnessed footage last year on the Discovery channel of a competition dubbed "The Eco-challenge", an intense combination of activities including nocturnal mountain climbing and paddling through rough seas, I was inspired to participate in something similar here in Hawaii. THE CHALLENGE On Thursday, March 18,1999, I received an e-mail message with the subject "wanna challenge?" from Gene Robinson inquiring about my availability in late April/early May for a backpack trip up Mauna Loa (lit. "long mountain" and the largest volcano in the world) via the Ainapo (lit. "dark land") Trail. I didn't know much about Ainapo, but as Gene filled in the details my desire to conquer the route only increased. THE AINAPO TRAIL - A BRIEF HISTORY "During the past two centuries several trails have been used to ascend to Mauna Loa's summit. The oldest, now known as the Ainapo Trail, extended 34 miles from the old village of Ka

Saturday, June 25th, 2005, I was joined by three good friends for a grand five day adventure on Mauna Loa.  I call it an adventure because there isn't really any other good way to describe what we did, it was certainly more than just a normal backpacking trip for me.  Besides myself, the other participants were Cheryl Batangan, George Privon, and Matt Wordeman.  Cheryl and George are HTMC members whom many of you probably know and Matt is a friend who lives in Kula.  The trip went something like this: June 25- Meet at the airport for breakfast and fly to Hilo.  We were picked up at Hilo International by the one and only Stan (the Man) Atkins of Hawaiian 'Kine Adventures.  For an extremely reasonable fee Stan dropped us off at the end of strip road at the Mauna Loa trailhead.  He had already picked up fuel and our permits the day before so we were able to bypass the National Park and save a bit of time.  We got underway at 11:15 am under beautiful sunny skies and