I’d rather not hike the Stairway To Heaven again in Oahu, mud slides, howling 60 knot winds, – my 2nd HASH hike

(Pictures at bottom – borrowed – during day time – I did it at night!)

Well, hello, I can say hello because I am still alive somehow after hiking 8 hours on the tiny tops of the Oahu mountains going from honolulu to Kaneohe/kaliua. It all started out as a fun garthering right? A true HASH eagles trail? “?” I thought I was just going to do a turkey trail since I wouldn’t say I was in great shape to be hiking for hours without water, but I did. Fatigued within 3 hours of the trail and being a little bit sick for gulping down a beer just recently earlier I came to the conclusion with others that this “stairway to heaven” just had to be the next very top peak ahead of us. We were all definitely wrong and very surprised when we crawled up that peak to declare ourselves HASH warriors and found ourselves 3 mountains short of “stairway to heaven”. The sun began to set and worries crept up our shirts, being that it was getting quite colder at 5000 ft high, having no water, and it being the first time any of us had hiked the man-made trail. In the dark we used the city lighted to keep crawling up mountain tops of 40-60 kt winds blowing at us and then sliding down in the misty muddy trail. We basically had to fall the muddy trail to reach stairway to heavens post at the top, an abandoned cement structure. We started to make some fire thinking we might have to stay overnight. Now their are still at least 10 that didn’t even make it to the first peak where a person was waiting to see who is last. To this day I don’t know if they made out alive like myself because the next day at 9:00 AM none of them reported back so I suppose Bigfoot got them before they could get back. As for myself and the 3 others 1 eventually took off down the “stairway to heaven” steps without us. Then around half hour later the rest of us 3 figured we might as well go for it and take the scarey extremely dangerous steps down as well so we can take nice hot showers as our motivation. You have to imagine all of us soaked in dry mud everyone on us, sprained ankles, rists, sore leggs, thirsty throats, and hungry bellies. On top of being dehydrated did I mention it was night with 40-60 kt winds and we chose to go down these 180* degree steps down (2000 steps I hear) called the stairway to heaven? Did I also mention many people have died on these dangerous steps and the trail is closed down??!!

Well you must of thought I was panicing, but I was actually laughing the entire time I fell over 100 times in the mud spraining all my muscles. I figured if I fall over the side of this steep mountains I might as well die laughing. The my friendly hikers infront of me definitely thought I was going crazy and maybe that was one of their main concerns and reasons to get off that mountain with or without me. We we started going down the steps it finally hit me that I still had a heights problem. My legs started to cramp up really bad and started shaking uncontrollably. All I could tell the rest of the group is to keep going and not stop. I was defintely going nutts, but under these harsh circumstances I kept my fears in control. To discribe the “stairway to heaven” trail in hawaii it is basically like a ladder going straight up with some regular very steep steps. The majority of the trail is straight up and in our case going straight down 5000 ft elevation to sea level. I can’t describe how scarey it was going down it in the dark, being afraid of heights, and ready to pass out because I didn’t have any water after vigorous hiking for 6 hours in the hot sun.

When we finally arrived at the bottom of the mountain no one waited for us so we either get lost in another black forrest or try to hitch hike on the highway. We make it to an highway exit and find a call box. After a period of waiting and showing our thumbs we stopped a cab and got a ride back to our cars. We were all so happy and so exhausted. This was definitely my first REAL HASH hike. I didn’t expect it to go this far, but I was defintiely excited and happy to be alive from this epic adventure! I was able to go to Hawaii on a 3 year vacation because of One24. Check the website out I’ll put you on my waiting list.

Images borrowed from Backyard Oahu:

For more information on the Stairway to Heaven trail and to see pictures of what I had to go down in the dark click here.

For more pictures click here.

Wikipedia.com information on the stairs going up the mountain.