Kudos and frustration

December 12th, 2007

Filed Under Hawaii Activities, Spread the Aloha |

The Kalalau Trail is an 11 mile trail that traverses the north shore of Kauai. Many day hikers will hike in the first four miles to Hanakapi’ai Valley waterfall as this is as far as you can go without a permit. Over the years, the trail has gone into serious disrepair including spots where it was virtually impassable. I was pleased to see this article in The Garden Island newspaper about how local Bill Summers was affected by a family hiking on the trail ahead of him that literally had to collect themselves after getting across a tight section of the trail. Summers, tired of waiting for the DLNR to do anything about it began hiking out to the trail with minimal tools and buckets and began widening/defining the trail on his own to make it safer for hikers. The more he hiked, the more he saw other areas in disrepair.

Here’s where the frustration comes in…IF the DLNR catches anyone making improvements on the trail, they will be cited!! Yeah. Well I know that the goverment is riddled with red tape and the money to complete the first two miles is being released in the beginning of next year but its pretty sad when you have people wanting to improve this natural wonder and your idea is to cite them for doing so! Now they did say they want to work with him because of the job he’s doing and I’m assuming they’re not making trolling the trail a top priority but the thought of citing people is ludacris.

With tourism being a main source of revenue for the islands, you would think that places like the Kalalau Trail and the Pu’u O Kila lookout at the Kalalau Valley, both of which are heavily advertised to potential visitors would be a main priority for funding. Yet both are in major states of disrepair. What is wrong with this picture??

So to the Bill Summers’ out there, the people who don’t wait for someone else to do it… a big mahalo to you. Let’s hope your acts of aloha make the government take notice in a GOOD way and restore the access to these natural places of beauty for all to enjoy for years to come! (Pictures below courtesy of Kalalautrail.com)