oahu_canyoneer
10-21-2013, 02:37 PM
This past Saturday we went out to do a canyon that we've been planning for months but hadn't been able to get everyone together to do it until now. It was a canyon that JJ had found that dropped off the side of a steep ridge on the rainy side of the island. You could see parts of it on Google Earth...with the kicker being what looked to be close to a 300' waterfall.
We got an early start to the day because in order to access the canyon you have to walk a 30 min approach to the trailhead which is in the heart of a neighborhood notorious for being unwelcoming to outsiders (hence the name of the canyon). We left the car at 6am and without any trouble got to the trailhead at 6:30am. We hoped that this would be a relatively short canyon compared to others that we had done, and Google Earth seemed to verify that but we came prepared for a long day anyways.
We reached the top of the graded trail in about 2 1/2 hours which was pretty good time and took a half hour break there. Now we had to make a decision to make...we could either follow the graded trail which would eventually take us to our canyon, but goes way out of the way before coming back towards the general area...or we could follow the ridge line to our canyon which would be a straight shot but which would certainly involve a considerable amount of bushwhacking. Either path we chose we knew we were looking at another 2 hours at least. We eventually chose the straight-shot bushwhack and about 2 hours (and much moaning and groaning) later arrived at a huge bowl in which our canyon started from. We could see that the stream started at the opposite side of the bowl, but due to the size of it we would be looking at another 2+ hours to get to where we needed to go so we decided to drop in where we were. We could see that we were missing a few waterfalls but since it was already after 11am we knew we couldn't waste time trying to walk all the way around the bowl. Also, we knew that we were still above the part where it started dropping straight off the ridge which we figured would be the best part of the canyon.
We anchored off a tree and dropped straight into the canyon floor. We were at 1900' elevation and had to get all the way back to sea level so we knew there was gonna be quite a few drops ahead of us. We put on our gear and started down the canyon. Our first drop was about 80' followed by another 60' drop shortly after so we pulled out a longer rope and did them both in one go.
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After that we hit another smaller drop followed by another two-tiered drop. The views were amazing as we could see deep into the valley below.
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We then began to hit drop after drop after drop as we started to really fall off the ridge.
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And we began to start feeling the lingering effects of the bushwhack as the drops just kept on coming...
70177
And then finally we hit the big guy. And it was big. We had two 100m ropes with us and it looked like it was gonna be enough...but we knew it would probably be close. I mean Google Earth couldn't be wrong could it?? So we started down taking in the views and how lucky we are to be experiencing something never been seen before.
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And then our smiles quickly disappeared. JJ was first down and before he got all the way to the bottom he started hooting and hollering. We were too far up to realize what he was saying but we figured the line had to be too short. How short though was the question. We quickly debated what to do next and decided to send Jerermy down on a different line. We weren't sure if JJ had his ascenders with him or not and how practical it would be to wait for him to ascend up over 300' (it turned out he did have his ascenders with him and was in the process of coming back up). There is a small rock ledge you can see in the first pic about 70' down, so we had Jeremy go down to there where he could see JJ and talk to him and then we tied another 70' rope to the other 100m rope we had with us and had Jeremy attach back below the knot connecting them. Then he went over the edge and we hoped that would be one enough. He had ascenders with him as well as another 80' rope so we figured if they needed to extend it even more they could do so from the bottom. We waited and waited and eventually saw Jeremy emerge as a tiny speck at the bottom of the waterfall. We breathed a sigh of relief that it was long enough and then JJ switched lines and went down on Jeremy's line. Then everyone else just went down on the original line, and switched to the extended line at the rock ledge.
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For me as the last one down wee decided to extend the anchor all the way down to the rock ledge where everyone was switching lines. So I did a double line rappel to get me to the rock ledge, pulled the rope through and attached the rap line and pull line to our extended anchor. Which got me about 10' from the bottom of the waterfall :facepalm1:(it turned out to be somewhere between 360-380'). I then jumped the last 10'. There was a semi deep pool just below the fall which I aimed for but ended up jumping a little too far out and twisting my ankle on a rock in the shallower part. But we were all down!!! We then pulled the ropes, took a last group shot of us at the bottom of a waterfall and prepared for a long hike out. It's a shame that that this guy is so hard to access because it's one of the most beautiful waterfalls we have on the island.
70184
We still had another 50' drop we had to do in the dark, and then rock hopped for another 2 1/2 hours to get to the trailhead, and finally the half hour walk back to the car. So much for a short day! It turned out to be 15hrs in total, but although our legs were aching we all felt accomplished.
We got an early start to the day because in order to access the canyon you have to walk a 30 min approach to the trailhead which is in the heart of a neighborhood notorious for being unwelcoming to outsiders (hence the name of the canyon). We left the car at 6am and without any trouble got to the trailhead at 6:30am. We hoped that this would be a relatively short canyon compared to others that we had done, and Google Earth seemed to verify that but we came prepared for a long day anyways.
We reached the top of the graded trail in about 2 1/2 hours which was pretty good time and took a half hour break there. Now we had to make a decision to make...we could either follow the graded trail which would eventually take us to our canyon, but goes way out of the way before coming back towards the general area...or we could follow the ridge line to our canyon which would be a straight shot but which would certainly involve a considerable amount of bushwhacking. Either path we chose we knew we were looking at another 2 hours at least. We eventually chose the straight-shot bushwhack and about 2 hours (and much moaning and groaning) later arrived at a huge bowl in which our canyon started from. We could see that the stream started at the opposite side of the bowl, but due to the size of it we would be looking at another 2+ hours to get to where we needed to go so we decided to drop in where we were. We could see that we were missing a few waterfalls but since it was already after 11am we knew we couldn't waste time trying to walk all the way around the bowl. Also, we knew that we were still above the part where it started dropping straight off the ridge which we figured would be the best part of the canyon.
We anchored off a tree and dropped straight into the canyon floor. We were at 1900' elevation and had to get all the way back to sea level so we knew there was gonna be quite a few drops ahead of us. We put on our gear and started down the canyon. Our first drop was about 80' followed by another 60' drop shortly after so we pulled out a longer rope and did them both in one go.
70172
After that we hit another smaller drop followed by another two-tiered drop. The views were amazing as we could see deep into the valley below.
70173
70174
We then began to hit drop after drop after drop as we started to really fall off the ridge.
70175
70176
And we began to start feeling the lingering effects of the bushwhack as the drops just kept on coming...
70177
And then finally we hit the big guy. And it was big. We had two 100m ropes with us and it looked like it was gonna be enough...but we knew it would probably be close. I mean Google Earth couldn't be wrong could it?? So we started down taking in the views and how lucky we are to be experiencing something never been seen before.
70178
70179
70180
70181
And then our smiles quickly disappeared. JJ was first down and before he got all the way to the bottom he started hooting and hollering. We were too far up to realize what he was saying but we figured the line had to be too short. How short though was the question. We quickly debated what to do next and decided to send Jerermy down on a different line. We weren't sure if JJ had his ascenders with him or not and how practical it would be to wait for him to ascend up over 300' (it turned out he did have his ascenders with him and was in the process of coming back up). There is a small rock ledge you can see in the first pic about 70' down, so we had Jeremy go down to there where he could see JJ and talk to him and then we tied another 70' rope to the other 100m rope we had with us and had Jeremy attach back below the knot connecting them. Then he went over the edge and we hoped that would be one enough. He had ascenders with him as well as another 80' rope so we figured if they needed to extend it even more they could do so from the bottom. We waited and waited and eventually saw Jeremy emerge as a tiny speck at the bottom of the waterfall. We breathed a sigh of relief that it was long enough and then JJ switched lines and went down on Jeremy's line. Then everyone else just went down on the original line, and switched to the extended line at the rock ledge.
70182
70183
For me as the last one down wee decided to extend the anchor all the way down to the rock ledge where everyone was switching lines. So I did a double line rappel to get me to the rock ledge, pulled the rope through and attached the rap line and pull line to our extended anchor. Which got me about 10' from the bottom of the waterfall :facepalm1:(it turned out to be somewhere between 360-380'). I then jumped the last 10'. There was a semi deep pool just below the fall which I aimed for but ended up jumping a little too far out and twisting my ankle on a rock in the shallower part. But we were all down!!! We then pulled the ropes, took a last group shot of us at the bottom of a waterfall and prepared for a long hike out. It's a shame that that this guy is so hard to access because it's one of the most beautiful waterfalls we have on the island.
70184
We still had another 50' drop we had to do in the dark, and then rock hopped for another 2 1/2 hours to get to the trailhead, and finally the half hour walk back to the car. So much for a short day! It turned out to be 15hrs in total, but although our legs were aching we all felt accomplished.