Birthday Hike Tradition Koko Head

Aloha, I woke up in the wee hours of my 27th birthday on a mission to conquer Koko Head. Not only did I conquer it, I rocked my best time yet! 27: 48. In my last Koko Head post I challenged myself to finish in 28 minutes!  

I've blogged about my previous hikes up Koko Head before. ( Hike One  , Hike Two) In that second post I challenged myself to finishing it in 28 minutes! On this special day, I grabbed my Go Pro to capture the view. Usually I just use my iphone photos for the blog. This was a treat! I have many more Go Pro hikes to share with you! 

This bridge is always the sketchiest part. 

Just to make you really feel my fear, here is a clip of my descend on the bridge portion of the hill.

Shaka for completing Koko Head and for birthdays. 

Aloha!

We Conquered Koko Head!

Aloha my loves, yesterday was a phenomenal day! Yesterday showed me I was a lot stronger than I thought I was! Yesterday we conquered Koko Head Crater Hike with our friends Zabrena and Matthew. 

 If you have ever been to Oahu or know anything about Koko Head, you know that it's extremely daunting and a vertical climb on old railroad ties. I had no desire to do this hike. Seriously? Koko Head?

I've come to the point that if I know I'll be sad about missing out on island things such as this, I just suck it up and do it. I'm in decent shape and I'm a decent hiker but this straight vertical climb mixed with the altitude really got to me the higher we climbed. We started off pretty quick and strong and about 75% of the way up we had to stop every five steps or so because the altitude just knocked all of us over!

We finished it and made it down safely, quivering legs and all. The view was phenomenal! You could see both the east side and the south side of the island, Hanauma Bay, Honolulu, Waikiki, the blow hole, Hawaii Kai, EVERYTHING! 

It took about five minutes at the top for me to get over the exhaustion of the hike in the blazing sun and enjoy the glorious wind.

There were all sorts of old pillboxes and structures at the top that we were able to stand on.  

He's so handsome! 

We went down a million times faster than we went up. Each shaky step was one step closer to ground level and flat land. I think it's safe to say we conquered each and every one of those 1,100 steps up and then the same 1,100 steps back down.

Afterwards, we treated ourselves to lunch and Lanikai Beach.

We found the most delicious pizza place in Pearl. This place makes me never want to buy any other pizza! Those pies were huuuuge!! 

Brady also found his Chive beer and had no issues with me making him pose with it!

I'm so thankful we have the opportunity for amazing days like these. Thanks for spending such a fun day with us Zabrena and Matthew! We are truly lucky we live Hawaii. I love our silly island life!

As always, mahalo for reading. 

Erin

Mānana Trail

Us on the ridge trail

Massive root mountain

We had to use the rope to repel down the rocks

Two other pools created by the waterfall

People jumping from the rocks to the bottom pool

Let me tell you our little story about Mānana Trail... Brady and I unaware that this hike actually has a split that carries out to two different hikes and mileage, decided to do the 2 mile Waterfall hike. Little did we know that by the time we realized we were gong up a mountain and not down to the base of a waterfall, we had already walked half of the 7 mile Ridge hike. So we decided to turn around in search of our waterfall. We walked in circles up and down that massive root "mountain" three times before we realized that the water fall was all the way down the root mountain and wayyy beyond that. We finally walked down the roots, which turned into rocks of all different sizes all the way down the mountain. If you notice, I have no photos of the rocks because a clumsy girl like me requires full concentration and balance while jumping off of large rocks. A few times we had to use the ropes that had been set out to repel down the rocks. The last few photos are when we finally got a good rest and reached the base of the waterfall to soak our tired toesies. It was incredible and totally worth it! In our half hour of sitting there we got to meet a hand full of fellow hikers from all over the globe along with locals who laughed at the chicken jumpers who were scared to let go of the rocks to take the plunge into the cold water. The hike back up was pretty brutal because we had already walked way more than we should have. We decided that it was a great hike and we'd do it again but next time we would keep an eye out for the waterfall signs!