22 Jan 2024
After my dives cancelled yesterday, I was talking with one of my dive shops and mentioned maybe exploring more of the island, since I will have had sufficient time to off-gas and they recommended I check out Pu’u ‘Ō’ō Trail, which is located right of Saddle Road (the road between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa), about 20 miles outside Hilo.
Map from bigislandhikes.com
The internet was a bit conflicted on the actual length- some sites said 7.4 miles, others 8.8… my longest hike to date is about 7 miles so good luck, me!
I knew I wanted to get an early start (I’m still hoping my blackwater dive tonight will go out!), plus I don’t know how long this hike will take, but I didn’t really want to have to wake up to an alarm.
I woke up at 5am. My body is still on mainland time I guess. But 5am is still too early, so I laid in bed for a while before deciding I wasn’t going to fall back asleep. I hit the road a little after 7am and got to watch the sun rise above Mauna Loa:
Welcome to the Pu’u ‘Ō’ō Trail!
Here we go!
This trail winds over old lava flows and through kīpukas, or old-growth forests that avoided being razed by the lava.
The trail started off with decent vegetation, but lots of loose lava rocks, so I spent a lot of time watching my footing instead of taking in the views
I heard a rustling in the bushes and spotted a goat!
I was waiting for him to pick up his head, but instead he heard me and darted off, so all I got was this butt shot 🙁
The trails are marked by ahu (Hawaiian cairns), but sometimes they are a bit hard to spot (can you find the next one in this picture?):
So I downloaded a map to use in my Hiiker app to hopefully help keep me on track (or find the way if I go off trail):
I wasn’t sure how much battery power it would use, so I only used it to spot-check my location (and see how much further I had left).
Into the forest we go!
There were so many birds calling in here! I was able to spot a few, but was only able to get pictures of some, like this Warbling white-eye:
Erckel’s francolin?
I didn’t realize until I loaded this picture up that the tree was covered in spikes!
Red-billed leiothrix:
This was a seriously pretty bird!
Apparently there’s something on the spiky tree he can eat?
Bird butt:
(no idea who this is)
Farewell, awesome kīpuka, hello, rocky lava field…
Kalij pheasant:
look at her red eye!
‘Apapane- these guys are EVERYWHERE! They make a soft trilling as they move from tree to tree and their color makes them easy to spot:
I spotted a pair of kalij pheasants, but wasn’t quite quick enough to get a picture of the male (who has some awesome hair!), so here’s another female:
Halfway there!
From here, you can either loop back or take the old powerline road back (maybe that’s where the differing distances on this trail come from?). I wasn’t looking forward to trying to wind my way through the lava fields again, so I opted to take the “straight” way back
I mean, it was mostly straight-ish, but it was also covered in loose lava stone. I think, if I could do things again, I’d probably just double back the way I came.
Earlier in the hike, I spotted this truck in the distance and here it is again, along my service road:
Lava tube!
Unfortunately, you need a permit to go exploring
But the rock colors along the edge sure were pretty!
One of the few “shaded” areas on this part of the hike:
Straight, and boring. Not a lot of birds in these trees 🙁
It doesn’t look like much in the picture, but this section was a fairly decent climb:
I can hear cars again! Almost done!
When I got here, I was the only car and wasn’t quite sure how to park (I’m the gray car backed in on the left). Apparently, there’s really no rhyme or reason to parking here, but I’m fairly certain that white SUV on the right is doing it wrong:
All in all, it took about 4.5 hours and ended up being 8.7 miles. Oof. This was officially my longest hike to date. Having completed it, if I were to do this again, I think I would probably only go to the 2nd kīpuka- there were so many birds there! But I wasn’t sure how long the hike would take and I needed to be back on the road by 3pm to make it back home in time to pack and get down to Kona for my night dive. I wish I would have spent more time on the beginning sections- the later sections are mostly rocky lava rocks and aren’t very fun to walk on. Though the trail follows the road for a bit on the way back and walking on that paved surface felt like walking on a rubber mat- it was glorious!
I’m probably going to regret doing such a long hike later, but I’m glad I got out and explored some more of the island.
…and it looks like I’ll be able to go exploring again tomorrow (and maybe hit up the beginning part of the trail to find more birds)- my blackwater dive along with tomorrow morning’s dive (which was a replacement for my other boat that cancelled) just got called off.
I’m torn. I mean, if dives are going to cancel, I wish the end of trip dives would get called instead, because my gear is all nice and dry now. But it looks like boats will probably go out Thursday/Friday, and there’s no way my stuff will dry out in one night (it gets surprisingly chilly up here in Waikoloa- most nights drop into the 50s, which is not so great for getting things to dry).
The good news is that this might be the first trip that gets posted in a timely fashion- I’m all caught up on photo editing and webpage creation! Go me!