Our last overcast day on the island. By this point we thought hikes were a pretty good bet for mediocre weather - better to be rained on and in the shade on a trail than to get rained on while lying on an overcast beach. So I found this ambitious hike in our new trail book. I was hoping by the afternoon the weather would clear and we would get some nice views. This side of the island, along the western coast, is largely unexplored by tourists. The book said this was by far the best hike on the island - a 12 mile hike - a steep climb to the ridge, then a ridge loop, then return on the original trail (Kealia). 
The trail begins behind Dillingham Airfield - it was really nice to watch the air traffic as we toiled with the switchbacks. Lots and lots of switchbacks. On a very steep trail, on a slope just waiting for a good rockslide. In spite of those hazards, I thought this was the nicest part of the trail. Beautiful dense Koa grove and nice lush understory vegetation, the ground plane scattered with dramatic boulders. As we got higher this part of the trail also provided nice views of the beach to the north and the agricultural land at the base of the mountains.
Taking a breather during the switchbacks.
Some of the nice vegetation along the trail. Love the paper-like, exfoliating park. And the ferns were amazing!
So once we got to the top of the ridge and began hiking the 'ridge loop' the path became obscured. At this point we were hiking 4WD hunting roads, which are easy enough to follow. The problem came when we came across multiple intersecting roads, none marked with trail signs, and the directions we were following thought it easier to list GPS points than to focus on accurate descriptive directions. So, we got a little lost. Between our trail map and the iphone we deduced that we were not on the correct path... I honestly don't really know how we got back to the path that we did. But lets just say that for about 3hours we hiked one way, then turned back to a certain point, then tried a different route. This happened several times, until eventually we happened upon the starting point of the loop trail and we decided just to call it a day. We hiked back down the Kealia Trail, motivated by ice cream.
See? There are several obscured ridges and no obvious path! I think we ended up hiking 8 or 9 miles... in the wrong direction. There was nice forest along our journey. We even came across a couple of wild pigs running across our path!
Kealia Trail on the return journey.
Before ice cream we made a quick stop at the beach where much of Lost was filmed. Do you recognize it? Perhaps not without sunshine... this part of the island knows few tourists, so it was ideal for filming.
View of the mountains we were suppose to hike while driving over the plateau through pineapple fields.
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