On my birthday Ticklebug presented me some hiking shoes and told me after a breakfast date we would be going on a surprise hike together. That surprise ended up being Oahu's Mount Olympus, a hike being ranked hard on All Trails with an elevation reaching over 2400 feet.
To get to Mount Olympus one has to complete either the Kolowalu Trail (which is ranked hard by All Trails) or the Wa'ahila Ridge Trail (ranked moderate). For some reason Ticklebug decided we would take the hard trail. He claims it's because Kolowalu is shorter, meaning less hiking time (I didn't know he was on a time crunch for other birthday activities) but what I really think is he just wanted to torture me. To top it off after doing some more reading I learned that the views of Kolowalu (which weren't many) aren't even as pretty as Wa'ahila. I didn't take any pictures of the Kolowalu portion of the hike for two reasons, the first was there wasn't too much to see besides rocks, trees, and dirt and the second because I was too busy huffing and puffing because it's one steep bastard!
The end of the Kolowalu trail meets with the end of the Wa'ahila trail, marking the official start of the Mount Olympus portion of the hike.
At first I was excited because Kolowalu was supposed to be the more difficult portion, however I saw how much farther we had to go and my excitement faded just a tiny bit.
While the second half did have some challenges to include rope climbing, scrambling (think using hands and feet to climb) it had some absolutely beautiful views.
The only downside is that the higher we got the more cloud coverage we faced at certain points.
Since the trail isn't marked it's was hard to determine where the actual summit of Mount Olympus was. Ticklebug had researched before the hike so he knew we were looking for an open area witch lots of flora. I'll admit that sometimes I was thinking, "this is far enough, I don't need the actual summit" but I'm glad I pushed through.
While the view from the summit is cloudy it is pretty cool to see the different sides of the island from one point.
Since the trail is point to point we had to hike all the way back to the Jeep. You would think it wouldn't be too bad because it's all downhill but going down presents it's own challenges. I forgot to switch up which leg to guide with going down and my knee gave out. Ticklebug faced his own set of challenges because he kept tripping and fell down a few times. I felt bad for the poor suckers I saw on the last leg of the Kokowalu trail asking how much farther to Mount Olympus. I was like, "Ooohhh, don't ask, you wont like the answer."
I was so sore for days following the hike and ended up taking a month long hiking hiatus. While it was exhausting I'll admit that completing the hike was absolutely rewarding. I don't know if I'll ever take on another beast like that. Ticklebug has plans to take another one on, but I'm not sure yet. I'll admit that it was an awesome bonding experience for us as a couple. It was just us pushing each other (actually him pushing me lol) and getting to just talk and experience something amazing together.
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