Mortals and Mount Olympus

(This is another take on the last post)

I'd like to dance a jig on a mountain ridge and scale a wall of mud without the fear of falling to a premature death. Or stand rooted in the wind and stretch out my arms and let my clothes flap like drying laundry, and not dream of the gust that topples me. No, there should be no dreams of tripping or falling, at least until I've sprouted wings. Nor should any real falling occur. I'll shimmy down those rocks with my inelegant style, sigh 'oh my,' and mentally rehearse each carefully timed series of bounding steps to the next point of safety, but there's no need for death just yet. I'd like to reach that mountaintop someday uninjured (and even splinters are included in that prohibition).

Before you hold my sex against me, I'll have you know that my girliness is not so extreme as for me to bemoan the dirt that rushed up under my recently painted nails, or the mud caking on my lower body. I didn't even curse at the occasional mosquito that got a little fresh with me. But 40 ft of mud and tree roots had me wondering just which part of my body was the doing the hiking and lamenting our lack of universal health coverage. I wouldn't mind a mild battle wound, but only if I could afford to have it repaired to 'like new' condition and it saved me from the prelims.

The hike ended undramatically with a 'I'm not climbing down that, I'm not sure I could get back up' at a spot that was comparatively unimpressive. My fear of heights finally got the better of me. Yet, had we continued we would have been late returning home. So we slowly headed back taking in the view and scanning the bordering foliage for tart strawberry guavas. The mud had me momentarily reflecting on becoming the hermit of the ridgeline. That would take care of the prelims and a few other nagging inconveniences of modern life. The wind made me reconsider. A rather large L-shaped log embedded in the muck received my salacious greetings and promises of affection with a stern rigidity. Then came the bit with the rope, but it wasn't quite enough to get a good bounce out of. Perhaps mountains need more rope. Our baby roller coaster chugged back to the big rock face and up, up, up we went. I am happy to report that I almost fell off only once. Only once and only almost.

That night as my pectorals did more of the aching than my calves or hamstrings, I dreamt of our almost adventure to Mt. Olympus. At every possible moment I slipped, I tripped, I fell, and I slid right off the ridge, only to find myself further along, but meeting the same disastrous end. Not even in my dreams did this mortal make it to Mt. Olympus. One of those spills was my last. At least this time I awoke to tell the tale.

Wa'ahila Ridge: Where fear, stupidity, and bravery meet

It was to be our last hike of the summer, so we had to pick something good. Something different. Something challenging that proved to be better than any of our other hikes. After all, it was to be our last. Several trails made it onto the short list, but who can resist the temptation of trying to climb Mt. Olympus? Of course there is no official trail that trudges on up to the peak, but it is certainly not an untraveled route.

The official trail is the Wa'ahila ridge trail. We started it from the park's parking lot at the top of St. Louis Heights. The trail started up slow on a wide path lined with well-combed strawberry guava bushes. The continuous upward climb triggered the burning question, would it only continue up?

Soon the answer came to us as the trail bounded down a rocky face. We skipped down the boulder face with only a few references to mountain goats. The rest of the trail rollercoastered up and down narrow at times, with great views of the surrouding valleys. For days to come I would dream about running that trail, tripping and rolling at full velocity down to my death at the bottom of the valley. Luckily, our adventure had no such traumatic end.

Strawberry guava freak that I am, I was happy to find the trail well-lined with this tangy fruit and not completely over-picked. So we snacked a bit along the way.

About half way toward the official end we reached a nice little spot ideal for camping out on the windy ridge and also a great place for taking a few pictures to prove that we did in fact climb that far. But it was still a fair distance from our goal, which we would never reach.

Of course, we did try to get there. We stopped at the official end drank some water, read the official sign, and continued on. For the first few minutes we scoffed at the warning and stumbled on down the trail, until we reached the wall of mud.

I call it the wall of mud because what there was of a trail wound up and over a myriad of exposed tree roots. We slipped our way up 40 feet or more of squishing, smacking mud in pools among them and did our best not to lose our balance. While climbing up, I somehow thought it would be easier going down, but learned better later. We continued on for a bit, still far from Mt. Olympus, hoping to make it once agin to the crest of the Ko'olau.

Twenty minutes later we were still far from our goal, having traveled up and down and up and down again. It seemed we had covered no distance at all expending all of our energy on changing elevation over and over. In the end we reach a bit where I was convince I would not be able to climb back up again. so we stopped took a picture and returned back. There was more slipping and sliding down the mud wall and more strawberry guavas plucked from along the trail. And it ended back in the parking lot with little time to spare on our time deadline. So, in the end, it was better to have turned around when we did than to press on to Mt. Olympus.