HONOLIULIU TRAIL
Posted on April 24, 2009
Honoliuliu Trail.
A day up the Honoliuliu trail along the Waianae mountains with my brother- in- law Ralph Morelli, computer science professor at Trinity College, CT, and author of Java, Java, Java, Object-Orientated Problem solving, and Duane B. former researcher, Dept. of Tropical Plant and Soil science, University of Hawaii at Manoa and myself.
The most common trees along that trail are species of Eucalyptus, a lot of Silky Oak,
also called Lacewood, and curiously enough a few Bunya Bunya trees, a conifer specie
closely allied to pines, redwoods and other primitive trees. Queensland, Australia, is
the tree native land. Once prized in Hawaii, its wood was used for ship’s masts and spars.
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My hike up the Waianae range
Posted on September 17, 2007
Like most sundays early mornings I really like to go hiking as a way to stay in touch with nature and its environment. My companion on those trecks is my dog Sunny, always happy to go sniff out some mangoose or feral pigs. Some days I will just go back scouting some places I went before to check whether the strawberry guavas or passion fruits are ripe for harvesting. Over the years I discovered places along trails with enormous bamboo groves, or old taro fields, even a small forest of Jack fruit trees.
But today I wanted to go up Waianae range to check on native trees. I started hiking from the Del Monte village along Kunia road straight up. The trail is very easy and mostly in the tree shade. The bottom part of the range is covered with Eucalyptus and silky oak trees, but than rapidly changing into Koa trees at a higher elevation. The Koa trees are quite big and well formed, whereby the silky oak looks mostly sick and dying. There is also Sandal wood and rose apple trees., and some very strong and bid yellow guava trees.
I was sadened by the sight of 2 very large Koa trees being cut down and quarter cut into 3 foot section, but unfortunately never collected, but left to rot. This was clearly the work of illegal logging . Somebody wanted to make a quick buck, but must have realised that this is not worth the candle, having to haul down heavy pieces of wood 2-3 miles down a trail for a few dollars.
The view from the top of the range is breath taking and nearly a perfect 180 degree, from Haleiwa to Kapolei.
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