With the creeks and canyons still running somewhat high and to be inclusive of Sara, we opted to use Jeff's last full day on Kauai to do an adventure hike into the heart of the island and the headwaters of the Wailua River, known as the Blue Hole. The name itself seems bizarre and inappropriate. Essentially this would be a hike to the bottom of the dramatic bowl of 3000' cliffs and waterfalls that drain Waialeale's wet summit. At it's very back is an interesting alcove with cascading springs and a thousand foot waterfall called the Wall of Tears (a much better name!). The hike had a reputation as one of the harder on the island so I was not expecting there to be too much of a trail. In the end it did take us pretty much the whole day to go about 5 miles.
We had a slow start to the morning as we packed up our camping gear at Anini, drove around to Wailua town and then turned inland. A mostly good but often muddy and rutted 4WD road with several stream crossings put our Jeep Wrangler to good use. We continued until we determined our Jeep speed became slower than we could walk, which put us only a half mile before the end of the road. Time to walk.
We strolled down the road, running into some lost Canadians that managed to drag us into their state for about twenty minutes until common sense prevailed and we proceeded to the road end like we should have. From here a faint trail along the left bank was enough to convince me we were on the right track. The couple must have almost immediately taken a hunter's trail and were never to be seen from again. This was one of those up and down over roots and boulders, in and out of forest sort of trails. A find-the-path-of-least-resistance journey. Progress was slow, slower than it should have been, but gradually we approached the steep cliffs and foggy headwall. Jeff and I were both intrigued by the North Fork Wailua River here- incredibly steep but with the right flow much of it looked like it could be packrafted. This was beautiful and natural Hawaii, interrupted only by the near constant mechanical screaming of helicopters overhead.
About half way up distance-wise the valley walls began to close in like a gateway and we had a brief swim in the two waterfalls plunging here. I was pleasantly surprised at the sculpted rock and deeply scoured pools, which gave me good hope for other high quality canyon features around the island.
Refreshed, we now followed the trail up the tributary creek north of the Wailua which had several nice bedrock channel sections and a steep climb out to an intervening saddle. The walls and waterfalls began to tower around us. We passed the one group of people we would see on the hike.
Once on top of the first saddle we could begin to see where we were in the steep walled bowl and the Wall of Tears became visible. We still had a fair bit of up and down to do crossing several small incised creeks. The last saddle had a small clearing, and since a snack break was called for, I played around a bit with the drone I had brought. This place had such a narrow view of the sky that I could not get a GPS lock, which essentially crippled the drone. Another ten minutes and we reached the point where we could go no further. A spectacular alcove filled with cascading water.
The return was uneventful but still very slow. Portions of the trail seemed even harder to follow in the reverse direction. We only had just enough daylight to get out of the maze of roads.
We returned to Anini Beach for another night of camping.
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