Waihi Falls

This past weekend my wife and I had planned to do a long ridge hike.  We went to bed early the night before and woke up around 7am the next morning only to be greeted by massive cloud cover around the whole island and some pretty heavy rains as well.  It was very apparent that doing a rige hike on this day would be pointless.  We quickly turned our sights to doing a short waterfall hike.  We drove towards the Manoa falls trailhead, parking in the neighborhood just before paradise park to avoid paying the five dollar parking fee.  We walked past the main parking lot and made our way to the start of the Manoa falls trailhead. 

I was surprised that we only passed one tour group an one other group on our way.  The usually crowded trail had very little congestion on this day, probably due to the steady rain throughout the day.  We quickly advanced on the main Manoa Falls trail to about the halfway point to the falls, when on our right hand side we saw a wide open clearing with a clear view of the stream forking.  We ventured down to the stream an then rock hoppe to get to the side an the right fork of Waihi stream, which was our intended goal for the day.  From the right fork we leisurely mae our way irectly through an up the streambed.  There didn't appear to be any trail so following the streambed up would be our best option.  The trail reminded me a lot of the neighboring Luaalaea falls hike.  I had no idea how long it would take to reach the waterfall from the right fork junction of the stream, but I was pleasantly surprised when after only about 15 minutes, the big waterfall came into view about 30 yards in front of us.  We headed up the final stretch of the stream until we finally reached the base of the waterfall. 

There was a tiny pool just below the base of the falls but it didn't get any deeper than a few feet.  I was rather surprised at how big this waterfall was.  I am not sure of the exact height but it appeare to me to be bigger than the actual "Manoa Falls".  The one negative about the waterfall was that it was a little tough to get a good picture of.  My wife and I spent some time relaxing an taking pictures but as the rain kept coming down on us, we finally figured it was probably time to go.  We made the quick jaunt back to the Manoa Falls trailhead.  All wet an cold, we jumped into our car, turned on the seat warmers that we seldomly have any use for, and headed for the nearest 7-eleven to consume amazing post hike slurpees.  While not the most amazing hike ever, it was short and sweet and the rain gave us just enough flow to see the waterfall in action.  All in all, not a bad day considering that our original plans had been ruined.

The fork in the stream.  The left fork goes to Manoa Falls and the right fork leads to the waterfall in the pictures below.

Having a little fun on our way back

A little vine swinging on a not so strong vine.