Eleva-

Ha, I bet some of you were hoping the title applied to discourse! Boy, were you wrong. Terrain all the way, baby, discussed as classlessly as ever I have anything. 

I hiked a mountain! Well, a ridge. Ko'Olani Ridge, which is only 671 meters (Errigal is still winning for highest mountain climbed by me in 2013).

This was something of a spontaneous mountain hike; yesterday, TJ and I went to get coffee at a café that happened to double as the headquarters of a hiking company! After so much beachification, a mountain sounded pretty grand, so I signed myself up. TJ is not much for the hiking, so I was on my own. The van would come for me the next morning at 7:30, I was told. No big deal, given that jet-lag had me up by 5:00 the other mornings, I thought. (This is what we in the business call "foreshadowing"). I set my alarm for 6:15, though, just to be safe, as I wanted to give myself time for a pre-ascension latte. 

I woke to the soft purring of my phone at 7:51, when the third phone call from the company finally penetrated my sleeping brain. The guide was amazingly understanding, and just offered to swing by after picking up water at the café, giving me time not only to dress and tear downstairs, but to get a latte at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (nostalgia shout out to Daejeon) next door. Whew! 

It was nice to have the extra time also because my incredibly burned back made it hard to do movements that involved... moving. This was never more true than when putting on a shirt. I never properly appreciated the amount of stretching my skin does over my shoulder blades, never really thought there was all that much going on, but boy, your back becomes a mountainous wonderland when you move your arms! Finally, painfully (but athletically) clothed, I made it down for an iced latte. 

The icedness of it makes a difference, Internet, because the iced kind get straws. Waiting, poised, on the corner with my latte, I poked the top so hard I knocked it out of my own hand where it splattered, undrunk, in the gutter. I did not even say a bad word, dear reader. At this point, late and burned, I accepted it as my cosmic due. I knelt, picked up the pieces of cup, and ran them over the street to the trash can, returned to my corner, and began disconsolately nomming my banana, unwilling to leave the corner and further delay the hiking party. 

And do you know what happened? It was the most remarkable thing: the coffee shop guy ran across the street with another iced latte in his hand for me, saying, "I saw you drop yours." What a lovely thing to do. It made my day worlds better, and I feel bad that I didn't catch his name so I could tell you to go to this exact place (the CB&TL at the corner of Kuhio and Kuamoo, right next door to the Ambassador Hotel in Waikiki) and ask for this guy, to tell him he is rad. He made my day. Seconds later, a suspicious gray van pulled up and an eager, fresh-faced person asked if I was me. I was, so I got in.

We actually drove right back to the area where TJ and I had lunch the day before, Hawaii Kai, and found the streets leading to the path absolutely packed. So our first hike was actually to the hike, through the wilds of suburbia:

Here on the right is Brandon, our guide, and Unknown Hiker Buddy #1, who was married to Known Hiker Buddy Mae, accounting for 2 of the 5 of us. They are heading up the very first part of the path. They are just past this lovely sign which, if you look nice and closely, says it is hunting season and we would all be advised to wear bright colors. Brandon assured us that hunting happens in the valley (the trail splits) and we would be in good shape on the mountain.

We seemed to pass through zones - in fact, Brandon's girlfriend, who was sort of our second guide, described this hike as being like going on a Disney ride through multiple phases, like Pirates of the Caribbean, and it was a good description.

 
 Here are zones one and two, reedy and piney, respectively. This Guy ran ahead of me, telling me about the flora and fauna and getting in my pictures. (Nah, he was cool. And by cool, I mean chill, a true Hawaiian bro).


The droopy pines in the photo on the right are Ironwood pines, and they are zone 2, as I mentioned. They give way, higher up, to Cook pines (for Captain of same name), which have nifty little rings of knobs where their limbs grew out. As young trees, they look sort of like umbrellas, just a plain stalk with a corona of branches at the top.


 Also found in this zone were Swamp... [treename]s. They have squishy bark! This picture is not totally capturing it, but that is a piece I like to call Thumb Molesting Tree. I know how to make an impression on local wildlife.


Zone 4 was the Martian Zone, an area where the dirt was exposed. When I say dirt, I am implying it is typical Earth dirt (I saw WALL*E, I know what's up). This dirt, however, was a most astonishing array of colors. It went all the way from sepia to lavender, and was nice and spongy to walk on. (Full disclosure you've probably deduced from reading this far: the world of correct picture formatting in blogger is a closed book to me).

Here is one of several shots I took staring straight down.
 

Here is a nice panorama of how the Martian Zone shades into the Rooty Zone. It was full of roots. I neither tripped nor applied a fractional exponent to anything in that zone, but it was tough to avoid, in both cases.

One of the species of root I nimbly avoided was banyan, a type of walking tree of which there are several notable specimens on Oahu. This one formed a natural doorway over the trail, and Brandon was nice enough to take a picture of me, in exchange for all the free photojournalism I conducted of him.

It is worth noting at this point, dear reader, that I had sweated away enough water that in this picture, I should be considered a concentrate.

Here is the fern zone. What is not captured is the fact that these ferns are not growing from the soil at trail level. They are cleverly concealing the fact that aside from the trail, THERE IS NO SOIL AT TRAIL LEVEL. This is a one-lane road. Periodically, nature provides turnouts so people can pass one another, but the rest of the time, it just rubs its hands together, waiting for you to slip and ride the mountain like a cowboy.

On the bright side, here is a view from Fern Gully:

This fine fellow was named Bear. He was a very genial type and we were delighted to stand aside in a tiny trail turnout to let him and his person go by. I share you with him because I am a giver.

 We now enter the hidden phase of the Fern Zone: the steps. At the little halfway hovel we'd stopped at, some graffiti had kindly pointed out that we had 355 steps to go. I have it on good authority that there are fewer steps to descend into or emerge from Hell.

This was a dirty lie.

 Once we vanquished the stairs - and I say that so simply because I do not want to upload enough photos of stairs to give you the impression of having climbed them yourself - we found all the other people whose cars had been parked at the bottom, apparently, but we also found a spectacular view.

It was a little breezy, so the Arrow of Righteousness in my panorama faltered a little. Ignore the black artifacts.

That's the other side of the island you're looking at. We could actually see around the whole southeastern quarter of it from here. The ridge continues to the left and right, but you are sadly prohibited from hiking it. (This does not stop everyone. In fact, it seems to encourage nudist survivalists, who are flushed out of the woods by park rangers in helicopters every so often. Sadly, none were in season when I was there).

I am become REBA, destroyer of sports attire

LOOK AT ALL THE SUMMER. LOOK AT IT.

At this point, I am not so much concentrated as distilled.






 That's really the cool, accomplished part of this story. All that's left are photos of cool things I saw that I liked. Downward!

These rocks get a photo because they remind me of The Onions at the Giant's Causeway. This is totally expected, given the similar seismic activity that created both. They're just funky looking, and deserved all the added immortality film and the Internet can give them.

 These are some shots of the trail down. I ran some of it, because it was so tempting, and I had these shoes that said "Trail" right on them! I am a great follower of directions.

 And, to finish, I give you what is my favorite picture of this trip, without cropping out the human head at right because I have already mistakenly uploaded the whole thing and by god am not going to wait to do it again correctly. Pfft. Patience. I give you It was Hot and Sweaty and Wonderful: