The ancient Hawaiian trail leading down into Kalalau Valley from Koke‘e’s Puuokila Lookout was wiped out by a landslide sometime after 1860. Yet people still regularly hiked into Kalalau Valley from Koke‘e and climbed back up on a new trail
The ancient Hawaiian trail leading down into Kalalau Valley from Koke‘e’s Puuokila Lookout was wiped out by a landslide sometime after 1860.
Yet people still regularly hiked into Kalalau Valley from Koke‘e and climbed back up on a new trail that originated in Koke‘e about halfway between Puuokila Lookout and Kalehu.
But that trail slipped away in the early 1900s, and since then, only six ascents or descents have been recorded on other trails: 1) Knudsen, Wilder, von Holt descent, early 1900s; 2) Cheatham, Hogg ascent, sometime thereafter, early 1900s; 3) Prigge, Ricker ascent, Oct. 1942; 4) Joy, Ressencourt, Kam descent, Aug. 1962; 5) Medeiros, Nakamura ascent, circa 1970s, and 6) Piliwale, Hussey ascent, circa 1980s.
Bill Joy, Eugene Ressencourt, and Henry Kam began their trek at the Kalalau Lookout about noon by walking eastward along a jeep road to the Puuokila Lookout. Then they followed a rugged northeasterly trail to a hill named Pihea, meeting wild-pig hunters along the way.
At Pihea they hiked northward along the ridge above Kalalau Valley that also marks the western edge of the uplands of Hanakoa Valley.
Around 5 p.m., they reached a clearing at about a 4,000-foot elevation, where they would descend into Kalalau Valley at daybreak the following morning on a ridge south of twin waterfalls visible from Kalalau Lookout.
By nightfall, they’d completed their descent at an old shack about a mile from the sea.
Of the descent, Ressencourt said, “It was excruciatingly body-wracking and not a little terrifying with what seemed like narrow escapes. It took us ten hours of terribly hard going to reach the shack.”
Next morning, they hiked from the shack to Dr. Wheatley’s, the “Hermit of Kalalau’s,” cave by the sea.
No trails now exist from Koke‘e into Kalalau Valley.
