Aiea Loop Trail - November 26th, 2010

Post turkey day hike!!

Me and Jenna

We had planned to do this hike with some of the guys Matthew worked with, but for some reason didn't, and I'm not even sure if they went or not. With that said, we decided we'd do this hike, with the couple we normally do hikes with Zach and Jenna. We didn't really have a set time to do the hike, so we just figured between 10 and 11 am, screw the getting up super early for hikes anymore!! So we left the house at 11:30 and took it us about 30 minutes to get there. The hike is located up on top of Aiea Heights Road in the Keaiwa Heiau State Park (don't ask me how to pronounce that one!)

Me and Matthew 

Well, go figure we parked in the wrong area so we had to walk to the top of the park, which is where the trail started, it started with a plaque for a memorial of the I believe it was 10 military members whose plane crashed into the mountain in 1944. The trail was pretty easy, just rather long, ending at probably just over 5 miles. there were a few downed trees in the path ways, lots of mud which made for interesting situations, including this lady in front of us at one point taking a HUGE digger! I'm not going to lie, I sort of chuckled. Poor little Jenna also took a digger once! I was just trying not to fall off the mountain, also trying to not get my shoes or myself muddy! I was successful until I reached the end of the trail then is when I kicked mud all over myself! There was also the excitement of the guys running ahead of us and hiding trying to scare us, it worked one time out of the 5 that they tried!

Zach being a monkey! :)

The views from the trail were pretty nice, including an awesome view of the H-3 highway from one side of the mountain. This hike is a popular family hike, with little to no elevation, we did see a lot of families with small children on the trail. Along with people running with dogs and just running in general. They claim this is a bike trail as well, which I would not want to take my bike on, to many downed trees and the mud I could imagine would be very dangerous.

H-3 

There are a few areas where the trails break off onto other trails, it will branch of to the left and right one trail on the left leads to a 12 mile round trip hike of the Aiea Ridge, and the one on the right goes on to continue the Aiea Loop. Maybe someday I will attempt the ridge hike sometime! 

Coming soon, hopefully the Mount Olympus hike!

Photo by Jenna :)

By the end we had hiked for about 2 1/2 hours, and Jenna's heart rate monitor clocked us in at burning about 900 calories! 

Length: 5 miles

Difficulty: Beginner

Directions and Map!

Profile and Elevation
I took this profile and elevation map from www.oahuhiking.com