Day 13: The Kalalau Trail

Day 13: The Kalalau Trail

We of course awoke with the sunrise. It is difficult to sleep later when camping, I have found. Our sleep had been a bit fitful anyway – probably the newness of the situation, not having a soft bed, things like that. We initially felt tired, but after packing up the rest of the stuff, we were ready to get on the hike. I must admit that after sinking in tiredness onto the sleeping bag the night before, I wondered how on earth we were going to make it back. But the simple fact was that we HAD to make it back.

Anyway, we were able to get on the trail by 7:30 which was a much better start. That steep descent from the day before between mile 9 and 10? Yeah – well, now we had to go UP that! At least the red sand wasn’t radiating baking heat at this time of the morning. Small blessings! We took our time around the tough parts of the trail, going slowly and carefully so we could come home to our kiddies. Things went pretty uneventfully, thankfully, and by 11:00 we had hit Hanakoa stream. Only 5 miles to go!

We made pretty good time even on this tough trail. We were pretty happy when we saw the mile 4 marker. I was getting pretty hungry by mile 3, and started haphazardly staggering around, when before my eyes, I spied a ripe fruit. I had seen plenty of the green fruit on this tree all day, but had not spotted a ripe one – they are yellow when ripe, whatever they are – either guava or passion fruit. I grabbed it greedily and it was delicious. It perked me up just a little, enough to keep going.

The only hitch in the day was coming into Hanakapi’ai at mile 2 – maybe half a mile out, I rolled my ankle – and on perfectly smooth trail!!!!! It was pretty painful and I had no idea whether it was a twist or a sprain or what. I knew I had to keep going and keep it warm like when I played basketball and that I did not dare to take my shoe off in case it would swell. Those last miles were not the most fun in my life, but I did make it, one carefully placed step at a time (and 4 advil to help me along).

Bill’s feet were hurting and my ankle hurt and after I rolled my ankle I developed a blister on my heel (which I quickly patched up with my kit), but this was the sum total of our hurts. This was really a great thing. In fact I can hardly believe that I hiked 22 miles in 2 days without dieing or being sore. We felt better after this 22 miles that our previous 11 mile hike up the canyon! Just goes to show, you can condition your body!

Hike: hard. Views: staggering. Worth it? Totally!

We immediately drove back to the pool and jumped in. AHHHHHH!!!!!!! Then Bill went out to get an ice pack and food.

After stuffing our faces with real food and icing my ankle, I was very pleased to diagnose that my ankle was most likely just twisted – very little swelling, just around the ankle bone and bruising, but the rest of my fun activities of vacation will not be hampered!